Yerma
Put two heaping teaspoonfuls of mate in a heated coffeepot or teapot, pour over a pint of boiling water, and keep covered for two minutes; then strain. When cold, put in a punch bowl, and add one quart of Apollinaris and a pint of chopped ice. This may be sweetened if desired.
A cold mate punch from the Prohibition-era soft drink literature, built like an iced tea and lengthened with sparkling mineral water. Almost everything here still works; the two points worth attention are the steeping and the fizz.
- Mate"Mate" is yerba mate, the dried leaf of Ilex paraguariensis, sold loose in Latin American groceries and in many supermarkets. Two heaping teaspoons to a pint is a fairly strong infusion, somewhat more leaf than you would use for black tea.
- Two minutes is deliberateMate turns harshly bitter with long steeping, and boiling water accelerates it. Traditional practice uses water well below the boil, around 160-175F; if you follow the recipe and pour it boiling, hold the two minutes strictly and strain at once.
- StrainingCommercial yerba is cut fine and includes a good deal of powder that slips through a coarse tea strainer. Use a fine mesh strainer or a paper filter, or the punch will be cloudy and gritty at the bottom of the bowl.
- ApollinarisA naturally sparkling German mineral water from the Ahr valley, once sold worldwide and used generically in period recipes to mean carbonated water. Any sparkling mineral water works; the mineral-forward ones suit mate better than plain seltzer.
- Sweeten before chillingThe recipe leaves sweetening to the end and to taste, but sugar dissolves poorly in a bowl of iced water. Stir sugar into the hot strained infusion, or make a simple syrup and add it to the cold punch.
- Order of assemblyAdd the Apollinaris last, directly before serving, and pour it down the side of the bowl. Combining it with the ice and the tea in advance flattens it within a few minutes.
- IceA pint of chopped ice is measured as volume, not weight, and it is there to chill and dilute at once. If you want the punch to hold its strength, chill the infusion in the refrigerator first and use less ice.
- YieldAbout two quarts all told, so a dozen or so punch cups. It carries the caffeine of a strong pot of tea, divided across those servings.
This belongs to the wave of American books that appeared as national prohibition approached, cataloguing drinks a host could put in a punch bowl without liquor in it. Yerba mate was the exotic note in that repertoire. Long the everyday drink of Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil, where it is drunk hot from a gourd through a metal straw, it seems to have reached North American cups largely through health and temperance writing, which promoted it as a stimulant gentler than coffee. Recipes like this one treat it as simply another tea leaf to be iced and diluted, which is why the method here looks nothing like South American practice: no gourd, no bombilla, no repeated refilling, just a heated teapot and a bottle of imported mineral water. The name "Yerma" appears to be a shortening of yerba, in the manner of the invented drink names these books favored.