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Lime-Grape Cup
Mix one pint grape juice, eight tablespoonfuls of lime juice, two tablespoonfuls of strong English breakfast tea, one pint of cold water, and one tablespoonful of acid phosphate. Put in ice box and when thoroughly chilled fill glass one fourth full of the syrup and add any carbonated water.
A soda-fountain syrup base, mixed cold and diluted at the glass. Nothing here needs cooking; the only obstacle is one ingredient that left the home pantry a century ago.
- Acid phosphateA dilute solution of phosphoric acid with calcium, magnesium and potassium salts, a common soda-fountain ingredient of the period. It adds a dry, mineral tartness without the fruit flavour of more lemon juice. It is still made for the cocktail and soda trade; if you cannot find it, the drink works without it but tastes rounder and less crisp.
- The teaTwo tablespoonfuls means two tablespoons of strong brewed and cooled black tea, not dry leaf. Brew it stronger than you would for drinking, as the recipe asks, and let it cool before mixing.
- Grape juiceMost commercial grape juice of the period was unsweetened Concord, and in this formula the juice supplies all the sweetness, as no sugar is added. If your juice is sweetened, the finished drink will be cloying at the stated dilution.
- MeasurementsEight tablespoonfuls of lime juice is half a cup, about four medium limes. A pint is 16 fl oz, so grape juice and water are equal parts.
- "The syrup"Confusingly, the recipe calls the finished mixture a syrup even though no sugar is boiled. It simply means the concentrate: fill a glass one quarter full and top with soda.
- YieldThe base comes to a little over a quart, about 37 fl oz. At the one-to-three dilution the recipe implies, that is roughly a gallon and a sixth of finished drink, about fifteen 10-ounce glasses. Halve it for a small household.
- KeepingFresh lime juice dulls within a day or two even under refrigeration. Mix the base the morning you plan to serve it rather than days ahead, and keep it covered so the tea does not pick up icebox odours.
Helen Watkeys Moore's collection appeared as national Prohibition came into force, and its title says everything about its purpose: to get Americans onto Uncle Sam's water wagon with something better than water. The recipes lean heavily on the soda fountain, which by 1919 was a well-developed commercial trade with its own ingredient list, and acid phosphate was one of its workhorses, used to give sweet fruit syrups the sharp bite that drinkers missed in alcohol-free drinks. The splash of strong black tea does similar work, contributing tannin and a faint bitterness that keeps grape juice from tasting like a child's beverage. Grape juice itself carried temperance associations in this period, having been promoted for decades as the respectable alternative to wine, and it turns up throughout books of this kind.