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Blackberry Vinegar
Make according to the recipe for raspberry vinegar, using five and one half pounds of sugar to every three pints of juice and water mixed. Blackberry Punch No. 1 Take two cups of blackberry juice, add four tablespoonfuls of lemon juice, four tablespoonfuls of orange juice, and a pinch of salt. Make a syrup of one cup of sugar and one cup of water by boiling for three minutes. Mix with fruit juice, pour into a punch bowl, over a large piece of ice, and when ready to serve add one pint of Seltzer water.
Blackberry Punch No. 2 To one quart of blackberry juice and one quart of grape juice add four and one half pounds of sugar. Stir until sugar is dissolved, and bring to boiling point. Strain through a jelly bag or fine sieve, and when cool add one pint of lemon syrup. Pour into punch bowl over a block of ice. A few blackberries may be added.
Three separate drinks share this entry: a shrub-style sweetened fruit vinegar and two punches built for a bowl and a block of ice. The vinegar recipe is a cross-reference, so read it alongside the raspberry vinegar it points to.
- The missing instructions"According to the recipe for raspberry vinegar" points to a method not printed on this page. Fruit vinegars of the period were generally made by covering the berries with cider vinegar, steeping several days, straining, then boiling the strained liquid with sugar. Here only the sugar-to-liquid proportion is given, and the liquid is described as juice and water mixed.
- That sugar ratioFive and a half pounds of sugar to three pints of juice and water is roughly 12 cups sugar to 6 cups liquid — a heavy syrup, not a drink. It is meant to be diluted, a few tablespoons to a tall glass of cold water.
- Vinegar strengthCider vinegar was typically in the region of 4-5 percent acidity, though home-made vinegar varied. Avoid "cleaning" vinegar at 6 percent or higher, and distilled white will give a flatter result than cider vinegar.
- Keeping the syrupSugar and acetic acid together preserve it well, but the recipe gives no processing instructions. Bottle it and keep it refrigerated rather than treating it as a shelf-stable canned good.
- Seltzer waterPlain carbonated water, which in this period often came in a siphon bottle; any unflavoured sparkling water works, added at the last moment so the bubbles survive to the glass.
- Lemon syrupA pantry staple of the period: equal parts sugar and water boiled to a syrup, then flavoured with lemon juice and often a little grated zest. A pint is two cups.
- The jelly bagA close-woven cloth bag for straining preserves. A double layer of damp cheesecloth in a sieve does the same work; let it drip rather than squeezing, or the punch turns cloudy.
- The block of iceA single large piece melts slowly and dilutes the punch gently. A bowl-shaped block frozen in a mixing bowl or bundt pan lasts far longer than a bag of cubes.
- YieldPunch No. 1 makes about six cups once the seltzer is in, or eight or so small cups. Punch No. 2 is a party quantity — something under a gallon before the ice.
This comes from a collection of non-alcoholic drinks. Books like it flourished in the years when hostesses who still owned punch bowls needed something to put in them; fruit shrubs and syrups were the obvious answer, since they had long appeared in American and British household books as a way of turning a summer glut of berries into a drink that would keep. The vinegar shrub itself is older than temperance — vinegar and sugar holding the fruit through the winter — and is often said to have been valued as a cooling drink for the sick and for harvest workers. Blackberries, gathered wild from hedgerows and fencelines rather than bought, made it a thrifty recipe as well as a virtuous one.