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Rhubarb Nectar
Wash and cut in pieces three pounds of rhubarb. Cook, in just enough water to cover, until soft. Strain. Mix the juice of one dozen oranges, one half dozen lemons, and three grapefruit, and one cup of grape juice. Add to the rhubarb juice. Measure, and to every cup of juice add one third cup of sugar. Bring to boiling point and, when cool, bottle. Keep in a cool place, and add ice water when serving.
A syrup concentrate rather than a finished drink: it is bottled strong and cut with ice water in the glass. Two things matter here, the rhubarb you use and how long the bottles keep.
- Stalks onlyUse rhubarb stalks and discard the leaves entirely — they carry high levels of oxalic acid and are not edible. Trim and compost the leaf blades before weighing, and reckon the three pounds as trimmed stalks.
- "Just enough water to cover"For 3 lb of cut stalks that is roughly 3 to 4 cups. Rhubarb collapses in 10 to 15 minutes at a bare simmer; longer only cooks off flavour.
- StrainingLet it drip through a jelly bag or a sieve lined with damp muslin without pressing, or the nectar will be cloudy and pulpy. The yield depends on how much water you used; expect several cups of juice.
- Citrus quantitiesA dozen oranges give roughly 4 cups of juice, six lemons about 1 cup, three grapefruit about 2 cups; fruit sizes vary, so measure rather than count. Strain out the seeds and most of the pulp.
- SugarWith about 12 cups of combined juice you will add roughly 4 cups of sugar. Stir it in off the heat until dissolved before bringing the pan up, so nothing catches on the bottom.
- Bring to boiling point, and no furtherThis is a pasteurising step, not a reduction. As soon as it reaches a boil, take it off; a rolling boil dulls the fresh citrus and turns the grape juice jammy.
- Bottling and keepingThis is not a sealed, shelf-stable preserve. "A cool place" meant a cellar or icebox; treat it as a refrigerator syrup in clean bottles and use it within a week or two, or freeze it in portions.
- Yield and servingAbout 3 to 3 1/2 quarts of concentrate. Start at one part nectar to one part ice water and adjust — the grapefruit and lemon make it sharper than the name suggests.
Rhubarb was the first thing out of the northern kitchen garden in spring, and nineteenth-century American households treated it as much as a tonic as a fruit — "pie plant" that also went into sauces, wines and cooling drinks for hot weather. A recipe like this one, pouring a dozen oranges and three grapefruit into rhubarb juice, points to the early twentieth century, when Florida and California citrus had become cheap enough by rail to be used by the crate rather than the piece. Temperance cookery of the period is often said to have worked hard to give hostesses something to put in a glass that looked and tasted like an occasion, with fruit nectars, shrubs and unfermented "grape juice" filling the space where punch had been. Bottled sweetened juice served over ice water might be characterised as the era's answer to the cocktail, and grape juice in particular had become a symbol of the dry table.