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Claret Cup
For twenty-five guests, take two quarts of claret; two glasses of sherry; two glasses of liquor; two thin slices of cucumber; juice of two oranges; and one quart of soda water. Add sugar to taste and ice to cool.
ROOT BEER-A recipe for making root beer may be found in the package of any extract sold for this purpose.
A Victorian wine cup, closer to a light punch than to sangria. Two things need settling before you start: what the glasses measure and what "liquor" means here.
- ClaretThe English trade name for red Bordeaux. Any dry, medium-bodied red works; avoid anything heavily oaked or high in alcohol, since the point of a cup is that it drinks light and cold.
- "Two glasses"A wine glass in period recipes is about 2 fl oz, so roughly 1/4 cup each of sherry and of the spirit. Some books use a larger tumbler measure, so this is genuinely approximate; start at 2 oz and taste.
- "Two glasses of liquor"Unspecified in the original. Period cups of this type often call for brandy, and sometimes maraschino or curacao. Brandy is the safe reading; a liqueur will push the sugar up, so hold back on the added sweetening if you use one.
- Sugar as syrupGranulated sugar dissolves slowly and unevenly in cold wine. Make a simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, boiled briefly, chilled) and sweeten with that so you can judge the balance.
- CucumberTwo thin slices are there for aroma rather than flavour, and they turn bitter and slimy if left in. Add them shortly before serving and lift them out when you pour.
- Soda water lastChill everything first, combine the wine, sherry, spirit, orange juice and syrup, then add the quart of soda water at the moment of serving so it keeps its lift.
- IceUse one large block or a few big pieces rather than cubes. Small ice melts fast and waters the cup down within minutes, which is why period recipes often chilled the bowl in a larger vessel of ice instead.
- YieldAbout three quarts, or twelve cups, which gives twenty-five guests roughly 4 oz each. That is a reception pour, not a glass of wine; double the batch if it is the only drink on offer.
- The root beer noteThe trailing sentence is not a recipe but a cross-reference to the commercial extracts of the day, which came with printed directions on the packet.
Claret cup belongs to a family of Victorian and Edwardian "cups" -- wine lengthened with soda water, sweetened lightly, scented with fruit or herbs and served very cold from a bowl. They were the drink of garden parties, regattas and afternoon receptions, where a full glass of wine was thought too strong and a spirit punch too forward. The cucumber slice here stands in for borage, the garnish whose leaves were said to give claret cup its faint melon smell; cucumber appears as an alternative in many period recipes. The scale -- twenty-five guests, quantities given in quarts -- reflects a period when a middle-class hostess was expected to entertain in numbers.