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Sugar (Quart Apollinaris Ice quart)
1 quart Apollinaris Ice 1 quart new or bottled cider 3/4 cup lemon juice Mix cider and lemon juice, and sweeten to taste. Strain into punch bowl over a large piece of ice. Just before serving add Apollinaris. B era.
A cold cider punch of the sort built in a bowl for a crowd rather than shaken by the glass. Two decisions carry it: the kind of cider, and when the sparkling water goes in.
- ApollinarisA naturally sparkling German mineral water, widely sold in America around 1900 and called for by name in period recipes. Plain seltzer or club soda stands in; a mineral-forward sparkling water gives something closer to the original.
- "New or bottled cider"Sweet, unfermented apple cider — new cider straight from the press, or the bottled equivalent. This is not hard cider and not the vinegar sold as cider vinegar. Fresh unpasteurised cider will begin to ferment within days, so buy it cold and use it cold.
- Lemon juiceThree quarters of a cup is roughly four to six lemons, depending on size. Squeeze and strain it the same day; bottled juice tastes flat against fresh cider.
- SweeteningGranulated sugar will sit at the bottom of a cold punch bowl indefinitely. Dissolve it first in a little hot water or warmed cider to make a syrup, then add it to taste — sweet cider may need very little, tart cider a good deal more.
- The iceOne large piece, not cubes. A block frozen in a loaf pan or small bowl chills the punch while diluting it far less than a bowlful of small cubes, which matters because the recipe has no water in it besides the Apollinaris.
- Add the sparkling water lastThe instruction to add it just before serving is the hinge of the recipe. Pour it down the side of the bowl and stir once, if at all; stirring or early addition drives off the carbonation and leaves a heavy, syrupy punch.
- YieldAbout two and a half quarts once sweetened, which fills roughly twenty four-ounce punch cups. Chill the cider and the sparkling water thoroughly beforehand so the ice has less work to do.
Apollinaris water came from a spring in the Ahr valley in Germany and was marketed in the English-speaking world as the "Queen of Table Waters". Its constant appearance in punch recipes of this period reflects the arrival of reliably bottled, reliably carbonated water as an everyday grocery item, and may also suggest a demand for non-alcoholic punches in the decades when temperance sentiment was at its height, though that connection is inference rather than documented practice. Sweet cider, cheap and seasonal in New England, was the obvious base — the same fruit-juice-and-fizz formula appears throughout the book with grape juice, raspberry syrup or tea standing in for the cider.