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Fruit Nectar
Juice of 4 oranges
1 cup pineapple juice
Juice of 2 lemons
1 cup grapefruit juice
1 quart ice water
1¼ cups sugar
2 cups water
Boil the sugar and 2 cups of water five minutes; cool and add the fruit juice and ice water. Serve very cold with two or three maraschino cherries in each glass.
A straightforward fruit punch built on a sugar syrup. The only real technique is the syrup, and the only real risk is oversweetening.
- The syrup is the pointBoiling 1¼ cups sugar with 2 cups water for five minutes dissolves the sugar completely and drives off a little water, giving a light syrup that mixes cold without grittiness. Cool it fully before adding juice, or the heat will dull the citrus.
- YieldRoughly 2½ quarts, or about ten to twelve tumbler-sized glasses (nearer twenty if poured into small punch cups). It scales cleanly for a bowl.
- Juice quantitiesFour oranges give about 1 to 1¼ cups; two lemons about ¼ cup. Buy by volume rather than count, since fruit size varies.
- Canned versus fresh juicePineapple and grapefruit juice would most likely have been freshly pressed. Modern shelf-stable versions are often sweetened or blended, so taste before adding the full syrup; you may want less.
- Ice waterRead this as thoroughly chilled water. If you add ice cubes to the pitcher instead, the drink will dilute as it stands.
- Maraschino cherriesThe name originally belonged to cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, though by the early twentieth century the brined, dyed American version was widely sold and may well be what was meant. Luxardo-style cherries in syrup are the closer match to the older product.
- ServingChill everything at least two hours before combining. Serve in a punch bowl with an ice block rather than cubes if it must stand, or over ice in individual glasses.
Fruit nectars and punches like this one fill the beverage pages of American entertaining books through the 1910s and 1920s, a prominence often connected to Prohibition, which took effect in 1920 and left hostesses needing something to put in the punch bowl. The formula here — a boiled sugar syrup, mixed citrus, canned pineapple juice, dilution with ice water — is the standard template of the era, repeated with small variations under names like fruit punch, fruit cup, and nectar. Grapefruit in particular signals the period; Florida and Texas groves expanded sharply in the early twentieth century, and the fruit shifted within a generation from a novelty to a breakfast and punch-bowl staple. The maraschino cherry garnish belongs to the same broad moment, as American producers developed the brined, dyed cherry — work generally traced to the 1920s onward — that would displace the original liqueur-steeped Italian version.