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Beverages: Hot and Cold (Three oranges and one lemon)
of three oranges and one lemon; a glass of claret; a half dozen Maraschino cherries cut in halves; and a wine glass of the liquor; a half-cup of cooked pineapple and juice, the pineapple cut in small dice. Add one pint of charged water.
The page begins mid-sentence — the opening line, almost certainly "take the juice," is missing — but what survives is a complete single-serving-to-two fruit punch and can be built as written. Everything hinges on assembling it cold and adding the soda last.
- The missing opening"Of three oranges and one lemon" most likely means the strained juice, roughly three-quarters of a cup to a cup of orange and about 3 tablespoons of lemon. Nothing else in the list would make sense with whole fruit.
- A glass of claretClaret is the old English term for red Bordeaux, dry and medium-bodied. The recipe does not define "glass," but since it distinguishes it from the "wine glass" that follows, it is presumably larger — somewhere between a 4 oz claret glass and an 8 oz tumbler. Any dry red will do, and a lighter one is better against the fruit.
- A wine glass of the liquorA wine glass as a measure is 2 fl oz, not the capacity of a modern stemmed glass. "The liquor" is maraschino — the clear cherry liqueur — not the syrup in a jar of cocktail cherries.
- Maraschino cherriesPeriod maraschino cherries were preserved in that liqueur and tasted of it. Modern jarred ones are dyed, brined and sweetened with corn syrup; Luxardo-style cherries in syrup are far closer to what the book assumed.
- Charged waterCharged water is plain carbonated water from a siphon. Use seltzer or club soda, cold, and pour it in at the last moment so the punch does not go flat while you dice pineapple.
- Cooked pineappleFresh pineapple was often stewed in syrup before use in this period. Canned pineapple in juice is a reasonable stand-in; half a cup with its juice, diced small enough to ride up a straw or fit a punch ladle.
- Yield and servingWith the pint of charged water the mixture comes to a quart or rather more, depending on how large a "glass" of claret is poured — two tall glasses or four punch cups. Chill the fruit juices and wine first rather than diluting with ice in the pitcher.
This fragment comes from the Butterick Cook Book (published by the pattern company behind The Delineator, in the early 1910s), on a page headed Beverages: Hot and Cold. The drink itself is a claret cup, the mildest member of the punch family — wine cut with fruit juice, a spoonful of liqueur, and soda water from a siphon. Its two luxuries are the maraschino, a cherry liqueur generally traced to Zara on the Dalmatian coast, and the pineapple, which by 1911 was arriving in American kitchens canned from Hawaii and had become an affordable emblem of hospitality rather than the rarity it had been a generation earlier.