Home › The Cook Book › Fruit Punch II
Fruit Punch II
1 cup water 2 cups strawberry syrup 2 cups sugar 1 cup tea infusion 1 quart Apollinaris Juice 5 lemons Juice 5 oranges 1 can grated pineapple 1 cup Maraschino cherries Make syrup by boiling water and sugar ten minutes; add tea, strawberry syrup, lemon juice, orange juice, and pineapple; let stand thirty minutes, strain, and add ice-water to make one and one-half gallons of liquid. Add cherries and Apollinaris. Serve in punch-bowl, with large piece of ice. This quantity will serve fifty.
A large-format party punch from the era when a punch bowl with a single block of ice was standard equipment for receptions. Nothing here is difficult; the work is in the arithmetic and in a few ingredients that have changed.
- ApollinarisA German sparkling mineral water, naturally carbonated, widely sold in bottles in America around 1900. Any dry sparkling mineral water substitutes directly; a quart is 4 cups. Add it at the very last moment or the punch goes flat before the bowl is half empty.
- Tea infusionOne cup of brewed tea. The recipe does not specify strength or variety. It is there for tannin and backbone, not tea flavour, so avoid anything smoked or heavily scented.
- Strawberry syrupA soda-fountain staple of the period: sugar syrup flavoured with strawberry, sweeter and thinner than modern preserves. Bottled strawberry syrup works; if you use a fruit puree instead, cut the two cups of sugar back, since the punch is already sweet by current taste.
- Grated pineappleCanned crushed pineapple in syrup; the recipe specifies only 'l can' and gives no size, so use a standard can. It is strained out along with the citrus and fruit solids, so its job is to perfume the base during the thirty-minute stand.
- Maraschino cherriesAt the time these were generally imported marasca cherries preserved in maraschino liqueur, though imitations were already appearing. Today's bright red bleached-and-dyed version is a different product; Luxardo-style cherries are closer to what the recipe assumes.
- StrainingStrain after the thirty-minute infusion and before the ice-water, and strain properly through a fine sieve or cloth. Pulp left in the bowl clouds the punch and clogs the ladle.
- Quantities and yieldThe finished volume is one and a half gallons plus the quart of Apollinaris, seven quarts in all, which at fifty servings works out to a punch cup of about four and a half ounces. Modern glasses hold more, so plan on thirty to thirty-five servings.
- The block of iceA single large piece, not cubes. It chills without diluting quickly, which matters because the recipe has already been brought to strength with ice-water. Freeze water in a loaf tin or plastic tub the day before.
Fruit Punch II belongs to the temperance side of the punch tradition. The word itself is generally traced to the drinks British traders encountered in India, built on spirits, citrus, sugar, water and spice, but by the end of the nineteenth century American church socials, women's clubs and school receptions had thoroughly reworked the form: the alcohol went out and bottled syrups, canned fruit and mineral water came in. Fannie Farmer's book, tied to the Boston Cooking School and its instructional mission, reflects that world closely, which is why the punch leans on commercial products a housekeeper could simply buy: bottled strawberry syrup, canned grated pineapple, imported Apollinaris. Those bottled mineral waters were themselves a mark of the period's faith in health and hygiene, advertised as pure at a time when municipal water was not always trusted, and a quart of Apollinaris in a punch bowl signalled a certain care as much as it added fizz.