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Claret Cup
INGREDIENTS.
1 dozen whole cloves. 2 qts. of charged Apollinaris or soda water. ¼ a cup of brandy, sherry or maraschino.
Ice.
Boil the sugar and water about six minutes; let cool, then add the lemon slices, with seeds removed, and the cloves; let stand some hours in a cold place. When ready to serve, add the claret, water and liqueur, all chilled on ice. Put a piece of ice in the pitcher and pour over it the mixture.
The beverage should not be sweet.
A wine cup of the kind that stood on sideboards for afternoon calls and summer suppers. Note before you begin that the printed ingredient list is incomplete: the sugar, water, lemons and claret itself are all called for in the method but never quantified.
- The missing quantitiesAs set here, only the cloves, the two quarts of charged water and the quarter cup of spirit are measured. Typical cups of this period used roughly a bottle of claret, a cup of sugar boiled with a cup of water, and two lemons, but that is an inference from comparable recipes rather than the book's own instruction.
- ClaretIn American and British usage of the period, claret means red Bordeaux, not a sweet blended wine. A dry, medium-bodied red with decent acidity is what the recipe assumes.
- Charged ApollinarisApollinaris was a German sparkling mineral water sold in bottles; "charged" simply means carbonated. Any plain sparkling water or club soda serves. Do not substitute tonic or a flavoured seltzer, which will make the cup sweet.
- MaraschinoThe clear cherry-stone liqueur from Dalmatia, not the syrup from a jar of bright red cherries. If unavailable, the brandy or sherry alternatives given are the safer choice.
- The hinge: chill everything separatelyThe syrup, lemon and cloves steep for hours, and the claret, water and liqueur are combined only at the moment of serving. Mixing the sparkling water in early leaves a flat cup; letting the cloves sit too long past a few hours turns it medicinal.
- IceThe recipe puts a piece of ice in the pitcher and pours the mixture over it, rather than filling with small cubes. A single sizeable piece chills with less dilution, which matters when two quarts of soda water are already thinning the wine, though the book gives no reason.
- "Should not be sweet"Treat this as the test. Add the syrup in stages once the wine and water are combined and stop while the drink still tastes of claret rather than of lemonade.
- YieldThe finished volume depends on the unstated amounts of claret and syrup; with two quarts of soda water plus a bottle of wine and a cup or so of syrup it would come to something over three quarts, enough for upwards of a dozen punch glasses.
Claret cup belongs to a family of lightly alcoholic wine cups that filled the space between a cocktail and a soft drink in late Victorian and Edwardian entertaining, served at garden parties and informal afternoon hospitality. The bottled mineral water named in the recipe, Apollinaris from the Ahr valley in Germany, was heavily advertised in the English-speaking world in this period, and cooks of the day often named it where any sparkling water would do.