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Ginger Ale Julep
Take the leaves from a few sprigs of mint and bruise in a glass with thin strips of lemon peel. Add the juice of half a lemon, one tablespoonful of powdered sugar, stir to a paste, and place directly on the ice for one hour to chill and ripen. When ready to serve, put the mixture into a tall glass, one half full of cracked ice, and fill up with cold ginger ale. Stir thoroughly and garnish with two cherries and sprig of mint.
A single tall drink, built like a bourbon julep with ginger ale standing in for the whiskey. The hour of resting is the part that does the work.
- The hinge: let the paste sitBruising mint and lemon peel with sugar and juice and then chilling it for an hour draws the oils out of the peel and the mint into the syrup. Skip the rest and you get lemonade with mint floating in it.
- "Place directly on the ice"In the period this meant setting the glass on the block in the icebox. The refrigerator does the same job; cover the glass so the mint oils do not scent everything else.
- Bruise, do not shredPress the leaves against the sugar until they smell strongly and look darkened. Pulverizing mint releases chlorophyll and a grassy bitterness that no amount of ginger ale hides.
- Powdered sugarPeriod powdered sugar was simply finely ground sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar carries cornstarch, which can leave a slight cloudiness; superfine or caster sugar dissolves into the lemon juice just as readily and cleaner.
- Lemon peelTake the strips with a peeler so they are yellow zest only. White pith turns the paste bitter over the hour it stands.
- Cracked iceCracked, not cubed and not crushed. Wrap cubes in a towel and hit them with a rolling pin; the irregular pieces chill fast without diluting the drink to nothing.
- The ginger aleMuch commercial ginger ale of the period, particularly the pale dry styles, was drier and sharper than many sweet supermarket brands. A dry or extra-spicy ginger ale keeps the tablespoon of sugar from tipping the glass into candy.
- CherriesThe original means a cocktail cherry. Brandied or preserved cherries suit the drink, though dyed maraschinos were themselves standard at soda fountains.
Juleps were American long before they were exclusively bourbon: the word descends, by the usual account, from the Persian gulab, rosewater, and reached English as a term for a sweetened medicinal draught before it settled on the mint-and-spirits drink of the Southern states. This version belongs to the temperance tradition, in which compilers set out to prove that the pleasures of the bar could be had without the bottle. Ginger ale was the obvious substitute for whiskey in that project: it was already the standard American mixer, widely bottled, and carbonated enough to give a dry drink some bite. What survives here is the technique rather than the alcohol, and the technique is the older part.