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Champagne Cup
1 cup sherry juice and rind one orange 2 cups Apollinaris ice 1 tablespoon powdered sugar 1 slice cucumber juice of one half lemon 2 cups cider 1 cup sherry ½ cup brandy large piece ice
An ingredient list with no method, in the style of a Victorian punch-bowl cup — the assumption being that anyone reading knew to build it over ice in a jug and strain it into glasses. The transcription is garbled, and worth sorting out before you shop.
- The list is doubled"1 cup sherry" appears twice, and the whole thing reads as two overlapping versions of the same drink run together — one built on Apollinaris, one on cider. Treat it as roughly: 1 cup sherry, the juice and rind of an orange, juice of half a lemon, 1 tablespoon powdered sugar, 2 cups of either Apollinaris or cider, the half cup of brandy, over a large piece of ice.
- ApollinarisA German sparkling mineral water from the Ahr valley, sold worldwide in the period and often used as a generic term for fizzy water. Any dry sparkling mineral water stands in; club soda, with its added mineral salts, is a nearer match than plain seltzer.
- No champagneDespite the name, the list contains none. Given how garbled the transcription is, the wine may simply have dropped out; "cup" was in any case a format name rather than a fixed formula. If you want it to live up to the title, replace the Apollinaris with a dry sparkling wine.
- The rind matters more than the juicePare the orange rind in wide strips with no white pith and bruise it against the sugar before the liquid goes in. That oil is what gives a cup its perfume; grated zest muddies the drink and orange juice alone tastes flat.
- The cucumber sliceProbably not mere garnish. A single thin slice, peel on, steeped briefly and then removed gives the cool green note common to English cups. Left in longer it turns vegetal.
- SherryA medium or amontillado style suits it best. A fino is drier and cleaner if you prefer less sweetness; cream sherry with the added sugar will be cloying.
- Ice"Large piece ice" is deliberate — one big block chills without diluting, which cubes will do quickly in a punch bowl. Add the sparkling water or cider last, at the moment of serving, and do not stir hard.
- YieldAbout a quart on the reconstruction above, or six small punch cups.
The "cup" was a summer fixture of English and American entertaining from the mid-nineteenth century — a wine base lengthened with something sparkling, sharpened with citrus, cooled with a piece of ice, and scented with cucumber or borage. Claret cup, cider cup and champagne cup all follow the same shape, and the name signals the format rather than a fixed formula, which is why this one can carry the title while listing sherry and cider. Its appearance in a Lowney's book, published by a Boston chocolate company, reflects a period when a cookbook issued to sell one product still aimed to cover the whole domestic repertoire: candies, frozen desserts and the beverages served alongside them all sat in the same chapter. Ice itself was part of the point — a large piece of block ice in a bowl was a modest luxury, and the cup was built around it.