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Ginger-Ale Punch
Juice of 4 lemons 1 pint grape-juice Sugar or sirup to taste 1 quart ginger ale Mix fruit-juices and sugar or sirup. Just before serving, add ginger ale.
A three-ingredient punch that depends entirely on temperature and timing: the base is mixed ahead, the ginger ale goes in at the last moment.
- The hingeAdd the ginger ale only as the punch goes to the table. Stirred in early, or poured over a bowl of ice that has been sitting, it flattens within minutes and the drink tastes like sweet grape water.
- Lemon yieldFour lemons give roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup of juice. Strain out the pulp and pips; the original assumes hand-squeezed juice, not bottled.
- Grape juiceA pint means 2 cups. Bottled grape juice of the period was typically unsweetened Concord, which may be why sugar is listed separately. If you use a sweetened bottling, taste before adding any sugar at all.
- SirupSugar syrup, made by boiling equal parts sugar and water until clear and then cooling. It dissolves properly in a cold drink where granulated sugar will sit on the bottom. Start with about 1/2 cup and adjust.
- Ginger ale of the periodGinger ale in the 1920s was sold both as pale dry and in sweeter golden styles. A dry ginger ale keeps the punch from tipping into soda-pop sweetness.
- IceChill all three components thoroughly before mixing rather than relying on ice cubes in the bowl. A single large block or a frozen ring melts slowly and dilutes far less than cubes.
- YieldAbout 1 3/4 quarts, which is roughly a dozen small punch-cup servings or seven or eight tumblers.
New Delineator Recipes appeared in 1928, in the middle of national Prohibition, and its beverage chapter reflects that: pages of fruit punches, fruit cups and ginger-ale mixtures where an earlier household book would have offered claret cup or champagne punch. Commercial unfermented grape juice, promoted from the 1890s onward as an alternative to wine, was a natural partner for bottled ginger ale, and such mixtures were common at American clubs, church socials and women's luncheons. Prohibition ended with repeal in 1933.