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Old Glory Punch
Rub the rinds of one lemon and one orange over fifteen lumps of sugar to remove the oil, and put with one pint of grape juice, one third cup of lemon juice, one third cup of orange juice, one cup of grated pineapple, three or four sprigs of mint, a pinch of salt, and a bit of grated nutmeg. Cover, and put in the ice box until well blended. Add a pint of soda water and plenty of ice. Put a spoonful of whipped cream on top of each glass and a sprig of mint.
A Prohibition-era fruit punch built on an old bartender's trick: sugar rubbed against citrus peel to capture the oil. Everything else is straightforward, but a few of the quantities need translating.
- Start with the sugar and rindThis is the step that makes the drink. Rub each lump against the zest until it turns yellow-orange and damp, then let the lumps sit with the juices until dissolved. The phrase "to remove the oil" means removing it from the rind into the sugar, not discarding it, and the resulting oleo-saccharum carries far more citrus aroma than juice alone.
- Fifteen lumps of sugarLump size varied, but a cube of roughly a teaspoon is a fair working estimate, which puts this near 5 tablespoons, or a scant third of a cup. Modern cubes are close enough in size to use directly, and they abrade the zest better than granulated.
- Grape juiceUnfermented bottled Concord juice, sweet and deep purple, was the standard American bottled grape juice of the period and is almost certainly what is called for here. A modern Concord juice works as written; a dry varietal grape juice will read as thin and sour against the citrus.
- Grated pineappleFresh pineapple grated on a box grater, pulp and juice together. A cup of canned crushed pineapple in juice substitutes cleanly, though drain off some of the syrup if it is packed in heavy syrup.
- The ice boxSimply refrigeration. Two to four hours is enough for the sugar to dissolve and the mint and nutmeg to infuse; overnight makes the mint muddy and vegetal. Strain out the mint sprigs before serving.
- Soda water at the endAdd it after chilling, never before, and pour it down the side of the pitcher. The pint doubles as dilution as well as carbonation, so taste before adding more ice.
- The whipped creamUnsweetened or barely sweetened, softly whipped so it floats rather than sinks. It can curdle where it meets the acidic punch, so spoon it on at the moment of serving.
- YieldAbout a quart and a half once the soda water goes in.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small flood of alcohol-free drink books published around the arrival of national Prohibition, when hostesses who had served punch for years suddenly needed something to put in the bowl. The name is pure patriotic branding of the moment. Grape juice was the emblematic temperance drink of the era, and William Jennings Bryan's much-mocked decision to serve it at a 1913 diplomatic dinner had already made it a political statement as much as a beverage. The rubbed-sugar technique, by contrast, is inherited straight from the older alcoholic punch tradition, where it had long been a familiar way to get citrus oil into a bowl.