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Grape Cup
In a large glass pitcher, put a piece of ice, one sliced orange, one sliced banana, three or four pieces of pineapple, and add any berries that are in season. Pour over this one quart of water and one pint of grape juice. Put in a few sprigs of mint and allow to stand until well blended. Serve in glasses one half filled with cracked ice.
A fruit punch built in the pitcher rather than cooked, so the only real variables are the strength of the grape juice and how long you let it sit. A few notes on proportions and timing.
- YieldA quart of water plus a pint of juice gives about six cups of liquid, or six to eight servings once the glasses are half filled with ice. Scale by keeping the 2:1 water-to-grape-juice ratio.
- The grape juiceThe recipe does not say, but bottled Concord juice, tart and deeply flavoured, is the likely intent. Some modern grape juices are sweetened and milder, so taste before serving and consider using less water, or a splash of lemon, if it tastes flat.
- Steeping time, not standing time"Allow to stand until well blended" is not quantified; half an hour or so in the refrigerator is enough. Left much longer, the banana slices break down into slurry.
- Bruise the mintSprigs dropped in whole give almost nothing. Slap them between your palms or press them lightly against the side of the pitcher first; do not shred them, which releases a grassy bitterness.
- The ice in the pitcher"A piece of ice" means a solid lump from a block, which chilled slowly without watering the drink down. Ordinary cubes melt fast and dilute; chill the juice and water beforehand and add ice only to the glasses.
- Fresh pineappleFresh pineapple contains bromelain, a protein-digesting enzyme; canned pineapple, being heat-treated, has none and keeps its shape longer. The recipe does not specify which to use.
- Strain or don'tThe recipe gives no instruction to strain, so the fruit presumably stayed in the pitcher. If you want a clean drink, strain into a second pitcher and put a spoonful of the macerated fruit in each glass.
Books of this kind multiplied in the years when American temperance agitation was turning into law. The recipes answer a practical hostess problem rather than a moral one, since a punch bowl was the fixture of summer entertaining and something had to fill it. Grape juice is the collection's workhorse because commercially pasteurized unfermented juice had become widely available in the decades before, and it was actively promoted as the respectable substitute for wine, most famously by William Jennings Bryan, who is generally said to have toasted visiting diplomats with it as Secretary of State. The result is a drink that mimics the color and the ceremony of claret cup without the claret.