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Cider Apple Cup
Slice three or four large apples without paring and add a little boiling water. Cover and let stand until cold. Strain, add one pint of cider, sweeten to taste, pour over crushed ice, and serve.
A cold apple infusion stretched with cider, from a book written for households that had sworn off alcohol. The only real decision it asks you to make is what "cider" means.
- Cider means sweet ciderIn an American temperance book, cider is unfermented apple juice pressed from whole fruit, not the alcoholic drink the word means in Britain. Use fresh or refrigerated cloudy apple cider, ideally unfiltered; clear shelf-stable apple juice will make a thinner, flatter drink.
- The water quantity is unstated"A little boiling water" is genuinely vague. About a cup over three or four sliced apples gives an infusion that will not dilute the pint of cider into nothing; more water means a weaker cup.
- Skins are the pointLeaving the apples unpared is deliberate. Colour and a good deal of the aroma sit in and just under the skin, and hot water pulls them out as the slices cool. Wash the fruit well, since nothing here is cooked to any real temperature.
- Choose tart applesA sharp variety gives the drink its structure. Modern dessert apples bred for sweetness will need more acid; a squeeze of lemon into the strained infusion restores the balance the original assumed.
- Cooling time"Let stand until cold" means several hours at room temperature, or overnight in the refrigerator once the pan has stopped steaming. The extraction happens during the cooling, so do not rush it with an ice bath.
- Strain properlyPress the slices lightly against the strainer, then pass the liquid through a second time using cheesecloth or a coffee filter if you want a bright rather than muddy cup.
- A pint is two cupsWith roughly a cup of apple infusion, the finished mix is about three cups before ice, which serves three or four in tumblers. Sweeten after combining, since cider varies enormously in sugar.
- Sweetening cold liquidGranulated sugar will sit at the bottom of a chilled drink, so stir in a simple syrup rather than dry sugar when you sweeten the combined mixture.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the flood of non-alcoholic drink books published around the arrival of national Prohibition in the United States, when a great many households needed something to put in a punch bowl and a great many writers were happy to supply it. Cider sits awkwardly in such a book: pressed apple juice ferments on its own within days unless kept cold, and the sweet-versus-hard distinction was a live one in American temperance argument through the nineteenth century, with farm cider barrels a frequent target of reformers. Recipes like this one, which builds a drink from whole apples steeped in water and then extends it with sweet cider, quietly demonstrate that the orchard could still furnish the table without the barrel. The technique itself is older than the politics: cold apple infusions and apple "water" appear in earlier household and invalid cookery as mild, slightly astringent drinks for people who were not meant to have anything stronger.