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Bouillon Punch
One teaspoonful oxcel, 1 teaspoonful lemon juice, 2 teaspoonfuls powdered sugar, 1 teaspoonful sherry wine. Fill glass or mug three-quarters full of hot water, stir thoroughly, add 1 tablespoonful claret and serve.
A hot fountain drink built in the glass, halfway between beef tea and a wine punch. Almost everything here translates directly; only the first ingredient needs decoding.
- OxcelAlmost certainly a concentrated beef extract of the sort sold to soda fountains, in the general line of Bovril, Oxo and Liebig's, though the brand itself is obscure. Use a teaspoon of beef bouillon paste or concentrate, or half a stock cube crushed; a thin canned broth will not carry the drink.
- Hot water, not boilingThe recipe specifies only "hot water." A hard boil will drive off the sherry and claret aroma, so pull the water just off the boil.
- ClaretIn American usage of the period this means a dry red Bordeaux or any dry red in that style. A modest Cabernet or Merlot is the right register; nothing oaky or jammy.
- SugarTwo teaspoons in a small mug reads as very sweet against beef extract. Start with one and adjust to taste.
- Order of buildingThe recipe puts the extract, lemon, sugar and sherry in the glass, then the hot water, then stirs thoroughly, with only the claret added at the end. Stir until the sugar and extract are fully dissolved before the claret goes in.
- The glassHot fountain drinks were served in china mugs or in a glass set in a metal holder. If you use thin glass, warm it with hot tap water first so it does not crack.
- YieldOne serving, about 6 to 8 ounces. Serve immediately; it separates and turns flat as it cools.
Soda fountains were a summer trade, and the winter answer was hot drinks: hot lemonade, hot malted milk, hot ginger, and, in accounts often repeated, above all hot beef bouillon, which by the 1890s was cheap and instant thanks to commercially bottled beef extracts descended from Justus von Liebig's meat extract of the 1860s. Beef tea had long standing as invalid food and restorative, which gave a cup of bouillon at the counter a faint medicinal respectability that plain wine punch lacked. Adding sherry and claret to it made the drink a punch in the older sense of the word: a mixed, spiced, warmed cup rather than anything carbonated. Some fountains in this period are said to have kept a little wine and brandy on hand for such formulas, a practice that Prohibition ended.