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Ginger Punch
Cut up one half pound of preserved ginger, add one quart of cold water, and one cup of sugar and boil for fifteen or twenty minutes. Add one half cup of orange juice and one half cup of lemon juice. When cool, strain, and serve with cracked ice. Apollinaris may be added when ready to serve.
A ginger syrup sharpened with citrus and lengthened with sparkling water. The only real decisions are what kind of ginger you buy and how much you dilute it.
- Preserved gingerThis means stem ginger candied or packed in heavy syrup, sold in jars in Chinese groceries and in tins as "stem ginger in syrup." Half a pound is about 225 g. Crystallised ginger can be used but is drier and sweeter, so you may want less added sugar; fresh ginger will not substitute directly, being far hotter and unsweetened.
- ApollinarisA naturally carbonated German mineral water, widely sold in America before the First World War and often specified by name the way people now say seltzer. Club soda or plain sparkling water does the same job.
- The boilThe recipe calls for a boil of fifteen to twenty minutes, which reduces the quart somewhat and draws flavour out of the ginger. Keep it covered if you want to hold the volume, uncovered if you want a more concentrated syrup.
- Citrus goes in off the heatCitrus after the boil -- The juice goes in once the boiling is done. Prolonged cooking dulls orange and lemon juice, which may be why. Add it to the hot syrup, then cool.
- StrainingStrain out the ginger pieces but keep them. They are excellent chopped over ice cream or stirred into whipped cream.
- Yield and dilutionThe finished base comes to something over a quart, depending on how much boils away. It can be poured neat over ice or cut with sparkling water to stretch it further.
- ServingThe recipe specifies cracked ice rather than cubes; cracked ice chills and dilutes faster, and punch recipes of the period often call for it. A little of the reserved jar syrup can go in if the punch tastes thin after the soda.
Ginger did heavy work in non-alcoholic drinks books, giving a spirit-free punch some of the bite and warmth people missed, which is part of why ginger ale and ginger beer became such prominent soft drinks. The call for Apollinaris rather than ordinary soda water suggests a comfortable household: the bottled German mineral water was a fashionable import, advertised heavily in American magazines before the First World War, and its name was used loosely as a synonym for good sparkling water. Preserved ginger of this kind was generally imported from China and sold in squat glazed jars that many kitchens kept on hand for puddings and cakes.