Lime Punch
8 cubes sugar 2 oranges 2 limes 1 1/2 cups water Cracked ice slice of pineapple 2 crystallized cherries Rub the cubes of sugar over the rind of the oranges and limes. Then put the sugar in a bowl, and pour the juice of the limes and oranges over it. Add the water, and serve when the sugar is melted, chilling with plenty of cracked ice. Put in the pineapple and cherries at the moment of serving. Serves 4.
A simple oleo-saccharum punch: the sugar cubes pick up the citrus oils from the peel, which carry most of the aroma. Nothing here needs heat, so the only real work is getting the sugar dissolved.
- The hinge is the rubbingRubbing the cubes hard over the rind until they are damp and orange-tinted is what makes this taste different from juice and syrup. Use unwaxed fruit, scrub it first, and press firmly enough to abrade the coloured zest without reaching the white pith.
- Sugar cubesEight standard cubes is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 tablespoons of sugar, depending on cube size. Cubes are the right shape for rubbing; if you substitute granulated sugar, rub the zest into it in a shallow dish and expect a slightly less clean result.
- DissolvingCold juice dissolves sugar slowly. Stir the sugar and juice together for a minute or two before the water goes in, and let it stand a few minutes more; grittiness at the bottom of the glass is the usual fault.
- Juice yieldTwo oranges give about 1/2 to 3/4 cup, two limes about 1/4 cup. Total liquid with the water comes to around 2 1/2 cups, which is four small punch glasses rather than four tumblers.
- Cracked iceCrack cubes in a clean towel with a rolling pin, or use the coarse crushed setting. Cracked ice chills faster than whole cubes but also dilutes faster, so add it at the end and serve at once.
- Crystallized cherriesThese are candied cherries, firmer and less lurid than modern maraschinos. Any glacé cherry works; a jarred maraschino will bleed pink into the punch.
- PineappleA slice cut into wedges divides among four glasses better than one whole ring. Fresh is preferable to canned here, since canned pineapple syrup pushes the drink sweeter than the sugar allows for.
Rubbing sugar over citrus peel to capture the oils is one of the oldest steps in punch making, older than the cocktail, and bartenders now generally call the resulting fragrant syrup an oleo-saccharum. An alcohol-free punch of this kind would have been unremarkable in American cookbooks of the Prohibition years and after, when writers published a great many fruit punches for the bowl.