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Pomegranate Juice
Mash the pulp of six pomegranates through a very fine sieve, add one half pound of sugar and the juice of three limes, and dilute with one pint of water. Strain several times through muslin, and bottle for use.
A simple pomegranate cordial from the Prohibition-era drinks shelf. The only real technique here is getting clean juice out of the fruit without crushing the seeds.
- Do not crush the seedsThe hinge of the recipe. Press only the ruby arils against the sieve; the white pith and the hard inner seed release tannin and a papery bitterness that no amount of sugar covers. A food mill or a potato masher over a fine strainer gives better control than a blender.
- How much juice six pomegranates giveA medium pomegranate yields roughly a half cup of juice, so six should produce around 3 cups. With the pint of water added, expect about 5 cups of finished syrupy juice, or eight small glasses.
- Half a pound of sugarThat is about 1 1/8 cups of granulated sugar, and it makes a sweet, cordial-strength drink rather than a plain juice. Warm a little of the water and dissolve the sugar in it first if you want to avoid grit at the bottom of the bottle.
- LimesThree limes of the period were likely small Key or West Indian limes; three modern Persian limes give roughly 1/3 cup of juice, which is a good deal more acid. Start with two and taste.
- Straining through muslinSeveral passes through damp, well-rinsed muslin or a double layer of cheesecloth clears the fine sediment that otherwise settles as a pink sludge. Wet the cloth first or it will absorb a surprising amount of the juice.
- "Bottle for use" is not preservingThere is no heating, sealing or preservative anywhere in this recipe. Refrigerate it and drink it within three or four days; a sweetened fruit juice left at room temperature will begin to ferment, which in 1919 would have defeated the whole purpose of the book.
- StainingPomegranate juice permanently marks wooden spoons, grout and most fabrics. Work over a sink with a bowl of water, which is also the standard way to separate arils from pith without spattering.
This comes from Helen Watkeys Moore's On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon, a collection of several hundred non-alcoholic drinks published as national Prohibition arrived, when hostesses suddenly needed something to put in the glass. The book's job was to make temperance drinking look like pleasure rather than penance, which is why its fruit syrups are sweetened and strained to a jewel clarity and bottled as though they were something stronger. Pomegranates were a seasonal specialty in the American market of the period, arriving in autumn from California and the Mediterranean, so this recipe sits at the more expensive end of the section. The technique itself is very old: sweetened, acidulated pomegranate syrup is the ancestor of grenadine, whose name comes from the French grenade for the fruit, and which by this date was increasingly being made with cheaper red syrups that never saw a pomegranate.