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Ginger Frappe
1 cup tea 1 cup ginger, chopped 1/2 can cherries and juice 3 limes (juice) 1 lemon (juice) 1 cup simple syrup 5 bottles ginger ale 1 bottle vichy 1 quart raspberries Combine tea, chopped preserved ginger with the syrup, pitted cherries with the juice, the juice of limes and lemon. Sweeten with simple syrup and chill on ice for several hours. When ready to serve add chilled ginger ale, iced vichy, and 1 quart red raspberries. Pour slowly over a block of ice, place in a punch bowl, and serve in sherbet cups. Serves 20.
A large-format party punch from the era when a block of ice in a bowl did the work of a refrigerator. Nothing here is difficult; the variables are the vintage ingredients and the bottle sizes.
- Ginger means preserved gingerThe instruction line clarifies what the ingredient list does not: this is sweet preserved or crystallized ginger in syrup, sometimes sold then as Canton ginger, not fresh rhizome. A cup of chopped fresh ginger would make the bowl fiercely hot and thin-tasting.
- VichyVichy was a mineral water, mildly saline and alkaline, sold carbonated. Any unflavoured sparkling water stands in; bottle sizes of the period varied.
- Bottle sizesThe bottles meant here are period soft-drink bottles, considerably smaller than a modern liter, so five of them come to something on the order of two quarts rather than five liters. Judge by the finished volume in the bowl rather than by the bottle count.
- The half can of cherriesPeriod can sizes do not map neatly onto modern ones; read this as roughly a cup of pitted sweet or sour cherries with their packing syrup.
- Simple syrupEqual parts sugar and water by volume, boiled briefly and cooled. The listed cup is a starting point; because the ginger and cherries arrive already sweet, taste the chilled base before adding more.
- The teaA single cup of strong-brewed black tea, cooled, is there for tannin and backbone rather than flavour. Brew it a little stronger than drinking strength, since it will be diluted many times over.
- Timing the carbonationThe hinge of the recipe: the base is chilled for hours, and the ginger ale, vichy and raspberries go in only at the moment of serving. Add them early and you serve flat punch with collapsed berries.
- Pouring over a blockA single large block melts far more slowly than cubes and keeps the punch from watering down over an evening. Freeze water in a loaf pan or bowl a day ahead; ring moulds work as well.
- ServingSherbet cups are shallow stemmed glasses holding roughly 4 to 6 ounces. A small ladle and a spoon for the fruit are worth setting beside the bowl.
Frappé comes from the French frapper, to strike or to chill, and in American usage it was applied loosely to anything from a half-frozen sherbet to a punch poured over ice. This one belongs to the non-alcoholic punch-bowl tradition, where the ceremony of a big glass bowl was kept up with ginger ale and mineral water; preserved ginger, imported from China in stoneware jars and stocked by grocers as a sweetmeat, gave a dry, warm bite. Vichy water was sold as much for digestive virtue as for fizz.