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Virginia Julep
Add the strained juice of half a lemon to four tablespoonfuls of plain syrup. Put into a glass one third full of cracked ice and fill up with cider. Put a grating of nutmeg on top, and decorate with a sprig of mint. Bruise a few of the lower leaves of the mint to bring out the flavor. Mulled Cider No. 1 Into a kettle put two quarts of cider, and add one finely crushed nutmeg, six whole cloves, and three pieces of cinnamon. Then add one cup of brown sugar, and let it simmer over the fire for fifteen minutes, but do not allow it to boil. Serve at once.
Mulled Cider No. 2 Simmer one quart of cider in a porcelain-lined kettle, and when it reaches the boiling point pour in the beaten whites of three eggs, with a half cup of sugar. Stir briskly and return to the fire and bring again to a boil. Serve hot in punch glasses.
Mulled Cider No. 3 Dissolve one quarter of a pound of sugar in two pints of hot water, and add five pints of cider. Simmer gently, and when it nearly reaches the boiling point add the beaten whites of one dozen eggs. Stir briskly, and add a grating of nutmeg. Serve hot.
Four drink recipes run together here: a cold cider julep and three mulled ciders. The word "cider" in a temperance book means sweet, unfermented apple cider, and every one of these was written to be alcohol-free.
- Plain syrupA sugar syrup, sugar dissolved in water and boiled briefly, in period books usually around equal parts sugar and water. Four tablespoonfuls is a quarter cup, which makes a distinctly sweet drink on top of sweet cider; a tablespoon or two suits most modern palates and most modern cider.
- Glass sizeNo glass is specified. Assume a tall 10-12 oz tumbler filled a third with cracked ice, which puts the finished julep at roughly 8 oz. The lemon and syrup go in first so the cider mixes them as it pours.
- The mintThe instruction to bruise only the lower leaves is the point of the drink. Press them against the glass or rub them between your fingers rather than muddling hard; torn mint turns grassy and bitter, and the upper sprig is left whole for aroma.
- NutmegA grating means whole nutmeg on a rasp. The "one finely crushed nutmeg" in Mulled Cider No. 1 is an entire seed for two quarts, which is assertive by current standards; half a nutmeg is closer to what most people expect.
- Do not let it boilNo. 1 says to simmer fifteen minutes but not to boil; a bare simmer preserves the volatile apple aroma and keeps the clove and cinnamon from turning harsh. Note that Nos. 2 and 3 do call for the cider to reach or return to the boiling point.
- Porcelain-lined kettlePeriod shorthand for a non-reactive pot. Enameled cast iron or stainless steel does the same job; the acid in cider will pick up a metallic taste from bare aluminum or unlined copper.
- The egg-white cidersNos. 2 and 3 are frothed hot ciders, related to the old flips and other egg-beaten hearth drinks. The recipes add the whites at the boiling point, but adding them to liquid at a hard boil gives shreds of cooked egg rather than foam; whisking them in off the heat and returning the pan briefly is safer, and you can strain if it curdles.
- YieldsNo. 1 makes about eight small cups from two quarts, No. 2 about four, and No. 3 seven pints of liquid before the whites, a little under a gallon, which will still fill a good many punch glasses.
On Uncle Sam's Water Wagon belongs to the small shelf of alcohol-free drink books that appeared around the arrival of national Prohibition in 1920, when bartenders and hostesses alike needed a repertoire that looked and felt like the old one. The julep is the clearest case: the classic Virginia and Kentucky versions are spirit, sugar, ice and mint, and this one keeps the sugar, ice and mint intact while swapping cider for the whiskey. The name itself is much older than either, generally traced through Arabic and Persian gulab, rosewater, and it long meant simply a sweetened medicinal draught before American drinkers attached it to bourbon and mint. The three mulled ciders behind it are older still in spirit, descendants of the English wassail bowl and of the egg-thickened flips and possets that were heated with a hot poker at the hearth; here the alcohol is quietly gone and the spice, sugar and beaten white are all that remain.