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Orange Julep
Chip off a quarter of the very thin rind of a Florida orange into a glass with a little finely crushed ice and 2 level tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar; ice and 2 level tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar; stir for a few minutes and bruise the orange peel to extract the flavor; then fill up the glass with cracked ice; add a small teaspoonful of creme de menthe, 2 sprigs of mint and serve.
A fountain julep: no spirits, just citrus oil, sugar, mint and a great deal of ice. The whole thing depends on getting the oil out of the peel before the ice goes in.
- The hinge is the muddlingThe flavour comes entirely from the oil in the outer rind, not from juice. Work the peel against the sugar and the small amount of ice for a full minute or two until the sugar is damp and fragrant; if you skip this you have sweet ice water.
- Peel only, no pith"Very thin rind" means exactly that. Take it off with a peeler or a sharp knife so it is translucent orange with no white underside, or the drink turns bitter.
- Duplicated line in the originalThe phrase "ice and 2 level tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar" appears twice, evidently a duplication in the text rather than a second addition. Use two tablespoons of sugar in total.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this generally meant finely ground granulated sugar, close to what is now sold as superfine or caster. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and can cloud the glass; superfine dissolves cleanly in cold liquid.
- Creme de mentheA non-alcoholic green mint syrup was sold to soda-fountain dispensers under this name, so it may be that rather than the liqueur. Either works; a teaspoon of the bottled liqueur makes the drink mildly alcoholic, mint syrup keeps it alcohol-free.
- Two grades of iceFinely crushed ice for the muddling stage, because it abrades the peel; coarser cracked ice to fill, because it melts slowly and keeps the drink from watering down. Do not use one for both.
- Glass and yieldOne drink. The recipe specifies only "a glass." There is no added water or soda in this version, so the dilution comes from the ice alone as it melts.
- The mintThe recipe says only to add two sprigs before serving; set at the rim rather than buried, they work as aroma at the nose.
The julep is generally traced to a sweetened medicinal draught -- the Persian and Arabic gulab or julab -- with the mint-and-spirits version a later American branch, and by the late nineteenth century the American soda fountain had borrowed both the name and the method for a temperance counterpart. Fountain operators produced something with the ritual of a bar drink -- the muddling, the frost on the glass, the sprig at the nose -- without the liquor, and orange, lemon and pineapple juleps all appear in dispensers' manuals of the period. The specification of a Florida orange is a commercial detail as much as a culinary one, Florida fruit then moving north by rail in quantity. Nothing here is cooked or mixed in advance, which is the point -- the julep was made in front of the customer, and the performance was part of what was sold.