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Manhattan Punch
Boil two cups of sugar with one cup of water ten minutes. Cool. Mix the juice of five oranges, five lemons, one can of grated pineapple, or one fresh one grated, one cup of tea, and two cups of strawberry syrup. When well blended, strain, and pour into punch bowl with enough ice water to make a gallon and a half of punch. Just before serving add one quart of Apollinaris, and decorate with strawberries or preserved cherries. This will be sufficient for fifty people.
A large-format party punch built on a cooked sugar syrup, with no alcohol in it at all. Everything can be mixed hours ahead; only the sparkling water goes in at the last minute.
- The hinge: add the fizz lastThe Apollinaris goes in just before serving, not into the base. Carbonation dissipates within minutes in a wide, warm punch bowl, and a punch mixed early and left standing will be flat by the time the second guest arrives.
- ApollinarisA German naturally sparkling mineral water, widely sold in the United States before 1914 and still a household word when this book appeared. Any dry sparkling mineral water or club soda serves; one quart is 4 cups.
- The syrupTwo cups sugar to one cup water boiled ten minutes reduces well past ordinary simple syrup and will be thick and heavy. Stir until the sugar dissolves before it boils, and cool it completely. The temperature of the syrup matters: hot syrup will dull the citrus juice.
- Strawberry syrupIn this period this meant a sweetened fruit soda-fountain syrup, not a thin coulis. A good-quality strawberry sundae or soda syrup is closest; two cups adds substantial sweetness, so taste the base before adding all of the sugar syrup.
- One cup of teaStrong brewed black tea, cooled. Tea is a long-standing punch ingredient, contributing tannin as well as flavour. Brew it stronger than you would drink it, and do not let it stew to bitterness.
- Grated pineappleA can of the period would have held somewhere around 2 to 2½ cups; crushed pineapple in juice is the modern equivalent. Since the punch is strained, you are extracting the juice, so press the pulp firmly in the sieve.
- Yield and servingA gallon and a half is 24 cups. Fifty servings means roughly a half-cup pour, which is what a traditional punch cup holds — plan on more per head if you are using tumblers.
- Ice waterThe ice water is a measured ingredient, not just chilling: it takes a strong concentrate up to volume. Use a large ice block or ring rather than cubes if the bowl will stand for an hour, or the punch will thin out as it melts.
The formula itself is entirely conventional for the era — cooked syrup, citrus, tea for astringency, a bottled fruit syrup, and a sparkling mineral water to finish. The tea is no anomaly: it is a standard ingredient in punch-making generally, spirituous and otherwise, where it stands in for the tannic grip of wine. The reliance on canned pineapple and commercial strawberry syrup marks the period too, when the soda fountain had made bottled fruit syrups an ordinary grocery item.