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Cider and Ginger Ale
Put three lumps of ice into a pitcher, adding the rind of one lemon, one half pint of cider, and one bottle of ginger ale. Mix well, and serve with a slice of lemon in each glass.
A two-minute pitcher drink from the temperance years, and it depends almost entirely on what you mean by cider.
- Cider means unfermented juiceIn American usage of the period, "cider" in a recipe of this kind normally means sweet cider — fresh, cloudy, unfermented apple juice — and if the source is a temperance collection, as the drink's non-alcoholic construction suggests, hard cider is clearly not intended. Use good unfiltered apple cider, not clarified apple juice, which is thinner and sweeter.
- Half a pintOne US cup, 8 fluid ounces. The whole recipe scales cleanly by the cup if you are making a larger pitcher.
- One bottle of ginger aleBottle sizes varied, from small splits of six or seven ounces up to twelve ounces or more, so the intended ratio could be anywhere from slightly under one part ginger ale to one part cider up to about one and a half to one. Start with a 12 oz can and taste; a dry ginger ale keeps the cider from turning syrupy.
- The rindPare it in wide strips with a vegetable peeler and take as little white pith as you can. Pith turns the drink bitter if it sits. The rind is there for aroma, so it wants five or ten minutes in the pitcher, not an hour.
- Three lumps of iceIce was cut from a block, so a lump is a good deal larger than a cube from a tray — think two or three ordinary cubes each. Large pieces are also the right choice here, since they dilute the carbonation less.
- Mix gently"Mix well" need not mean vigorously here. Stir once or twice with a long spoon and pour; vigorous stirring flattens the ginger ale.
- YieldAbout 20 ounces, which is two generous glasses or three small ones. Build it just before serving rather than letting it stand.
This appears to come from the run of American temperance drink books published in the years around national Prohibition, when hostesses needed something to put in a pitcher that was neither punch nor plain water. Ginger ale was the workhorse of that literature: cheap, widely bottled by the 1910s, sharp enough to stand in for the bite of something stronger, and endlessly mixable with fruit juices. Sweet cider was its natural partner in autumn, being a seasonal, distinctly domestic drink whose fermented cousin the movement was campaigning against. The lemon rind is generally traced to older punch practice, where citrus peel oil was used to give a cold drink some perfume; here it seems to do the work that spirits would otherwise have done.