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Raspberry Cup
½ pint red raspberry juice
3 pints ice water
½ pint red currant juice
Juice of 3 lemons
Sugar to taste
Heat the raspberries and currants until soft; strain; add to the juice sugar and lemon juice; put into pitcher with a large piece of ice. Just before serving, add the ice water. Serve in tall glasses half filled with cracked ice, a sprig of mint and a slice of orange on top.
A summer fruit cup of the punch-bowl sort, built on cooked-and-strained berry juice rather than syrup. The measurements are given in imperial-era pints and gills; the working notes below cover the conversions and the one step that decides whether it tastes fresh or stewed.
- The measuresA half pint is one cup, so you need 1 cup raspberry juice and 1 cup currant juice to 6 cups (3 pints) ice water. The finished quantity is a little over two quarts, or eight tall glasses.
- How much fruit that meansRoughly 1½ to 2 lb of raspberries and the same of red currants will yield a cup of juice each after cooking and straining. Frozen fruit works equally well and often gives more juice.
- Heat only until softThe instruction says heat until soft, not boil. A few minutes over low heat, just until the berries collapse and release their juice, keeps the flavour bright; a hard boil turns raspberry into jam-flavoured syrup and dulls the colour.
- StrainingPour through a jelly bag or a sieve lined with damp muslin and let it drip rather than pressing, which pushes pulp through and clouds the drink. If clarity matters less than yield to you, press and accept the haze.
- Sugar to tasteRed currants are sharply acidic, and the original leaves the sugar open. Start at about ½ cup for the full batch and dissolve it in the warm juice before chilling, since granulated sugar dissolves only slowly in ice water.
- Add the water last, and whyThe concentrate sits in the pitcher with a large block of ice; the ice water goes in immediately before serving. This keeps it from being diluted twice over, once by melt and once by the water. A single large piece of ice melts far more slowly than cubes.
- Currant substitutionFresh red currants are seasonal and scarce in most markets. Unsweetened cranberry juice is the closest widely available stand-in for their acidity, though it is less perfumed; reduce the added sugar accordingly if you use a sweetened bottled currant juice.
Fruit "cups" filled the same place at early twentieth-century entertaining that a punch bowl did at a larger party: a chilled, unfortified fruit drink for afternoon receptions, garden parties and card evenings, dressed with mint and citrus and served in tall glasses over cracked ice. The pairing of raspberry with red currant is older than the drink and is a preserving-kitchen habit — currants are rich in pectin and acid, raspberries in perfume and sweetness, and the two are a well-attested pairing in jellies. Ice water measured out by the pint is itself a period marker: The Book of a Thousand Menus belongs to an era when domestic refrigeration generally meant an icebox stocked by delivery, and a recipe could reasonably assume both a large block of ice for the pitcher and a supply of cracked ice for the glasses.