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Rhubarb Water
Wash and cut in pieces three stalks of rhubarb. Pour over two cups of boiling water, and add one half cup of sugar. Cover and let stand until thoroughly cool. Strain, and serve with cracked ice.
A cold infusion rather than a cooked syrup: the rhubarb is never boiled, so the drink stays pink-tinged and clean-tasting instead of turning to stewed-fruit murk.
- The hinge: no heat after the pourBoiling water is poured over raw rhubarb and then left alone. Simmering the stalks would break them down and cloud the liquid, and the tannic, cooked-compote flavour is a different drink entirely.
- Leaves off, alwaysUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves carry oxalic acid and related compounds and are not edible in any quantity; trim and discard them along with any leaf base still attached.
- How much is three stalksStalk size varies enormously. Aim for about 6 to 8 oz (170-225 g) of trimmed rhubarb cut into 1-inch pieces, which is roughly 1 1/2 cups.
- Sugar to tasteHalf a cup to two cups of water is sweet by modern standards but rhubarb is genuinely sour. Start with 1/3 cup, stir while the water is still hot so it dissolves, and adjust after straining.
- Standing time"Until thoroughly cool" will take a couple of hours at room temperature, or refrigerate once it has stopped steaming. Longer steeping, up to overnight in the fridge, deepens the colour and the tartness.
- StrainingA fine sieve is enough; pressing the pulp through gives more flavour but also more cloudiness. The spent rhubarb is soft and sweetened and can be eaten or folded into yoghurt.
- ColourField-grown green rhubarb gives a pale amber drink. Forced or hothouse stalks, or the reddest garden ones, are what produce the pink colour people expect.
- YieldAbout two cups of infusion, so two small glasses over cracked ice, or one tall one. Doubling or tripling works without adjustment.
Fruit waters like this one were workhorses of the American non-alcoholic and temperance drinks literature, cheap, home-grown and requiring no bar skills, and rhubarb was an obvious candidate because it appeared in the garden in spring before any other fruit and was already a fixture of American kitchens as pie filling and spring tonic. Cold infusion of the raw stalk, rather than stewing, keeps the sharp malic acidity that makes the drink refreshing, and the instruction to serve with cracked ice reflects a period when household ice commonly came in a block and had to be broken up by hand.