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Fruit Punch
1 cup sugar 1 cup hot tea 1 cup orange juice 1 cup lemon juice 1 quart Apollinaris 1 cup pickled cherries 1 orange sliced Pour the hot tea on the sugar and when the latter is dissolved add the other ingredients. Serve in a punch bowl with a large block of ice.
Substitute pineapple or strawberry juice for the tea if preferred.
A temperance punch built on strong tea and citrus, with sparkling mineral water for lift. It comes together in minutes; the only real decisions are the tea strength and when the fizz goes in.
- ApollinarisA naturally carbonated German mineral water, bottled from a spring in the Ahr valley and sold worldwide as a table water. Any dry sparkling mineral water works; a quart is about 4 cups, or one standard 1-litre bottle.
- Add the fizz lastThe recipe's order is misleading if you read it as a single mixing step. Combine sugar, tea and juices, chill thoroughly, then pour in the sparkling water over the ice just before serving or the punch will be flat.
- Tea strengthUse freshly brewed black tea at ordinary drinking strength and no stronger. Tea that has stewed will turn bitter and astringent once the acid from a cup each of orange and lemon juice hits it.
- The acid balanceA full cup of lemon juice against one cup of sugar is very sharp by current taste. Taste before the ice goes in and hold back part of the lemon, or add a little more sugar dissolved in a splash of hot water.
- Pickled cherriesIn this period that generally means cherries put up in a spiced sweet vinegar syrup, a preserving-cupboard staple. Drained maraschino or brandied cherries are the usual modern stand-in, though they are sweeter and lack the vinegar edge.
- The block of iceA single large block melts slowly and dilutes far less than cubes. Freeze water in a loaf pan or plastic container the day before; cubes will water the punch down much faster.
- The fruit-juice variationSwapping pineapple or strawberry juice for the tea removes all the tannin, so the punch reads sweeter and rounder. Cut the sugar by a third if you take that route, and dissolve it in a cup of hot juice or water instead.
- YieldAbout 2 quarts before ice, which is roughly 12 punch-cup servings or 8 tumblers.
Fruit punch of this kind belongs to the great age of the non-alcoholic party bowl in American entertaining, when temperance sentiment, women's clubs and church socials created steady demand for something festive that no one could object to. Tea did the work that wine or rum once did, supplying tannin and body, while a bottled sparkling mineral water supplied the sparkle: Apollinaris, drawn from a spring in Germany's Ahr valley, was among the most widely advertised table waters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and appears by name in cookbooks and bar guides of the era much as a brand of soda water might today.