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Raspberry Cocktail
Mash a pint of ripe, red currants; strain them through cheesecloth; pour the juice over a pint of red raspberries and set on the ice to chill. At serving time sweeten to taste and pour into the glasses, putting a teaspoon of powdered sugar on the top of each.
A fruit cocktail in the older sense — a chilled first course served in a stemmed glass, with no spirits in it. Two ingredients and no cooking, so the whole thing rests on the fruit being ripe and the mixture being genuinely cold.
- What the measures meanBoth pints are measures of whole fruit rather than liquid: call it a generous 2 cups of currants and 2 cups of raspberries. A pint of currants, strained, gives well under a cup of juice.
- "Set on the ice"An icebox instruction. Chill an hour or two so the berries sit in the juice and take on colour and tartness; served merely cool the dish loses much of its point.
- Powdered sugarIn books of this period powdered sugar usually meant finely milled granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. Either works for the spoonful on top, but superfine (caster) sugar sparkles rather than clouding.
- Sweeten last, and lightlyRed currants are sharply acidic and the point of the dish is that edge. Sweeten only at serving time as directed — sugar added early draws juice from the raspberries and softens them to mush.
- Don't crush the raspberriesOnly the currants are mashed. Pour the juice over the raspberries and leave them whole; they should stay intact in the glass.
- StrainingCheesecloth gives a clear juice; currant seeds and skins are unpleasant in a drinking glass. Press gently rather than wringing hard if you want the juice bright rather than cloudy.
- YieldFour to six small cocktail or sherbet glasses as a first course. Serve with a spoon — this is eaten as much as drunk.
- If currants are unavailableFresh red currants have a short summer season and are scarce in North American markets. Frozen currants, thawed and mashed, strain perfectly well; unsweetened cranberry juice is not a substitute, being far less fragrant.
Before Prohibition and well after it, "cocktail" on an American menu did not necessarily mean a mixed drink — a fruit cocktail, oyster cocktail or grapefruit cocktail was the opening course of a formal dinner, served in a small stemmed glass at each place before the soup. Red currants, now uncommon in American markets, were a standard summer garden fruit in the early twentieth century, grown chiefly for jelly because of their high pectin and acid; a cook with currant bushes had a brief glut every July and recipes like this one used the juice fresh rather than boiling it down.