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Beacon Punch
Mix the juice of seven lemons, three oranges, one cupful of pineapple juice, one half cupful of prune juice, two cupfuls of strawberry syrup, and one pint of tea. Sweeten with one cupful of plain syrup, and add three pints of water. Put in ice box until thoroughly chilled and serve with cracked ice in a punch bowl.
A Prohibition-era fruit punch built on syrups rather than spirits, which means the balance depends entirely on how sweet your syrups are. Taste before it goes in the bowl.
- Plain syrup"Plain syrup" is simple syrup: equal weights sugar and water, heated until clear, then cooled. Books of this period sometimes used a heavier 2:1 syrup, so start with half the cupful and add the rest to taste.
- Strawberry syrupTwo cupfuls is a large amount and it is the dominant flavour here. Period strawberry syrup was a sweetened fruit-juice syrup, closer to a fountain syrup than to modern thin cordials or to sugar-free pancake syrup, which will not work at all.
- Prune juiceHalf a cup adds a little body and a dark note. At this proportion, against two cupfuls of strawberry syrup and the citrus, it is unlikely to read as prune.
- The teaThe recipe specifies only "one pint of tea"; black tea, brewed and cooled, is the likely intention. Steep three to five minutes only and cool it before mixing; tea held long on the leaves or left to stew turns astringent and will clash with the citrus.
- Juice quantitiesSeven lemons is roughly a cup to a cup and a quarter of juice, three oranges about three quarters of a cup to a cup. Fruit size varied more then than now, so measure rather than count if you want consistency.
- Ice boxAn ice-cooled cabinet; use the refrigerator. Chill the mixed punch until thoroughly cold, as the recipe directs, before it meets the bowl.
- Cracked iceAdd it at serving, not during chilling. Cracked ice melts fast and will dilute a punch that has been standing in it; if you want a bowl that holds up through a party, freeze some of the punch itself into a block.
- YieldAbout three and a half quarts, or roughly twenty-five to thirty small (four-ounce) punch cups.
The formula is characteristic of American non-alcoholic drink collections of the early twentieth century: a base of tea for tannin and backbone, several citrus juices for acid, and bottled fruit syrups of the kind a soda fountain kept on hand for the sweetness and colour that liquor and wine used to supply. Punches were often named after streets, hotels and clubs, and Beacon may be a nod to Boston's Beacon Street or Beacon Hill, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented.