Home › At the Fountain › Tutti-Frutti Punch
Tutti-Frutti Punch
Combinations of fruit flavors may be varied indefinitely. The special characteristic of the following recipe is found in the maraschino cherries, which give a peculiar zest to the whole. Boil together for 5 minutes i quart of water and 1 pound of sugar. Add the grated rinds of 2 lemons and 4 oranges and continue boiling for 10 minutes longer. Strain the syrup through cheese cloth and add i quart cold water. Extract the juice from the lemons and oranges, strain and mix with 2 dozen Malaga grapes cut in half and seeded, 2 2 sliced Tangerine oranges, 4 slices of pineapple, 1 banana cut into slices, and 1 pint bottle of maraschino cherries, with their liquor, the cherries being halved. Serve from a punch bowl in which a cube of ice has been placed. "Quality rather than variety will make the reputation of the soda department of your business."
A soda-fountain punch built on a boiled citrus-rind syrup, meant to be made in quantity and ladled from a bowl. The typography of the original has suffered: the "i" characters are 1s, and "2 2 sliced Tangerine oranges" is almost certainly 2 sliced tangerines.
- The hinge: strain the rind syrupThe grated rinds go in only after the first five minutes of boiling, and the syrup is strained before the cold water is added. Left in, the zest can go on giving up bitter oils and turn the punch harsh.
- Syrup proportions1 quart water to 1 pound sugar is a light syrup, roughly 2:1 by volume. Diluted with a second quart of cold water plus the fruit juices, the finished punch is moderately sweet by modern taste; the maraschino liquor adds more.
- Maraschino cherries have changedIn this period they were commonly Marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, and the 'liquor' called for is presumably that alcoholic syrup. Today's supermarket jar is a brined, bleached, dyed sweet cherry in corn syrup, which will read as candy rather than as the 'peculiar zest' intended. Look for cherries packed in liqueur if you want something closer to the original effect.
- A pint bottle of cherriesThat is about 16 fl oz including liquid, so roughly 1 to 1 1/4 cups of drained cherries. Halving them matters here: they need to release colour and flavour into the punch rather than sit at the bottom.
- Malaga grapesA large, seeded, thick-skinned white table grape once common in American markets. Any firm seedless green grape, halved, does the same job, and you skip the seeding.
- Pineapple'4 slices' presumably means four rings, cut about 1/2 inch thick. Canned rings work but bring their own syrup; drain them and cut the added sugar slightly.
- The cube of iceIn fountain usage a 'cube' was likely a sizeable block cut from a commercial ice cake, which melts slowly and waters the punch down less. A single large mould frozen in a loaf pan or bowl is the modern equivalent; loose cubes will dilute this faster.
- BananaSlice it last and add it just before serving; left to stand in the punch it softens to mush.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 quarts of liquid plus a considerable volume of fruit, so roughly 12 to 16 punch-cup servings.
Tutti-frutti is Italian for "all fruits," and by the 1890s the phrase had been thoroughly Americanised, attached to ice creams, chewing gum and fountain syrups alike, meaning simply a mixture of many fruits. The recipe belongs to the golden age of the drugstore soda fountain, when the dispenser was expected to compound his own syrups and punches from scratch rather than pour from a jobber's bottle, and when a punch bowl of this kind was sold by the glass to shoppers. The maraschino cherries at its centre were then still a genuine import trade: Marasca cherries from the Dalmatian coast, preserved in the clear cherry liqueur of the same name, expensive enough that they marked a drink as a luxury. American producers later substituted domestic cherries treated in brine and dyed, a shift already under way before 1920 and driven in part by pure-food regulation, with Prohibition often credited with completing it by removing the alcohol entirely, which is why the ingredient the author singles out for "peculiar zest" is the one a modern cook is least likely to recognise. The closing line about quality rather than variety reads as house advice of a familiar kind, aimed at proprietors tempted to advertise a hundred flavours they could not make well.