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Allied Punch
To one quart of any canned fruit juice, such as peach, pineapple, raspberry, or strawberry (use a combination of juices or one alone), add one cup of sugar and one half cupful of lemon juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, and put in ice box to chill. When ready to serve add cracked ice and any charged water.
A syrup-based punch built to be finished with soda at the table. The whole method is in the last sentence: the fruit base is sweetened, chilled and held, and the carbonated water goes in only when the bowl is being served.
- "Canned fruit juice""Canned fruit juice" here most likely means the sweet packing syrup drained from a can of peaches, pineapple or berries rather than modern unsweetened juice — peach and strawberry in particular were not sold as bottled juices then. If you use present-day 100% juice, consider cutting the sugar and tasting before adding more.
- Charged waterPlain carbonated water: seltzer, club soda or the siphon water of the period. The recipe gives no quantity, so add to taste, at the last moment so it keeps its fizz.
- Quantities in cupsA quart is 4 cups; the sweetened base comes to about five and a half cups, and the volume of the finished punch depends on how much charged water is added. Scale by keeping the ratio of 4 parts fruit juice to 1 part sugar to half a part lemon juice.
- Lemon juiceHalf a cup is roughly three to four lemons. It is doing structural work here, cutting the canned sweetness, so fresh juice is worth using in preference to bottled.
- Dissolve before chillingGranulated sugar dissolves poorly in cold liquid. Stir it into the juice at room temperature until no grit remains on the bottom of the bowl, then chill; otherwise the last cups poured are the sweet ones.
- Cracked iceCracked ice melts fast and will dilute the punch as it stands. If you would rather it did not, freeze some of the fruit base in a ring mould or use large cubes.
- Ice boxAn ice-cooled cabinet ran warmer than a modern refrigerator, so "chill" would have taken some hours. The base should keep a couple of days covered in the refrigerator, which makes this a practical make-ahead.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the brief publishing rush that followed wartime prohibition and the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919: books of punches, shrubs and fruit cups meant to fill the place of the wine cup at a party. The title is a joke on the older American slang phrase "on the water wagon," meaning to have sworn off drink. "Allied Punch" is usually taken to be named for the Allies of the First World War, though the book does not say so. The recipe also shows how thoroughly commercial canning had reshaped the home kitchen by then: the syrup left over from a can of peaches or pineapple was a household resource worth building a party drink around, and combining several of them was a way of getting a complex fruit flavour in February.