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Sparkling Punch
Place a large piece of ice in a punch bowl, pour over it one quart of cider, and add one cup of sugar and the juice of three lemons. When ready to serve add one quart of ice-cold Seltzer water.
A two-quart punch that depends entirely on temperature and timing: the seltzer goes in last, at the table, or the drink is flat before the first cup is poured.
- Cider means sweet ciderIn American cookbooks of this period "cider" commonly meant unfermented apple juice pressed from whole fruit, not the alcoholic drink the word means in Britain today. Use cloudy unfiltered apple cider from the refrigerated case; clear filtered juice makes a thinner punch.
- Seltzer, and whenSeltzer here is plain carbonated water, not club soda with added mineral salts and not sweetened soda. Chill the bottle thoroughly and open it only at the moment of serving; adding it early costs you all the carbonation.
- Dissolve the sugar firstA cup of granulated sugar dissolves slowly in cold cider, and stirring it around a block of ice slows it further. Whisk it into the lemon juice, or into a little of the cider warmed slightly, before it meets the ice.
- The lemonsFigure roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of juice for three lemons. Taste before adding the last of it, since a cup of sugar to a quart of cider is already sweet by current standards.
- The block of iceA single large piece chills without diluting, which is the whole point of specifying it. Freeze water in a loaf pan or a plastic container overnight rather than using cubes, which melt fast and water the punch down.
- YieldTwo quarts before ice, or about ten to twelve punch-cup servings of five or six ounces.
Temperance cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had a particular problem to solve: the punch bowl was the center of hospitality, and giving it up meant giving up a social form. The answer was to keep the bowl, the block of ice, the lemons and the ceremony, and replace the spirits with cider and charged water. Sweet cider carried an additional charge in these books, since apple cider left to itself becomes hard cider, and temperance writers were careful to specify the fresh, unfermented article. Bottled seltzer was the ingredient that made the substitution convincing at the table.