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Orange Mint Cup
Separate a rather sour orange into sections and remove the thin skin with a pair of scissors. Chill thoroughly, place in glass, sprinkle with powdered sugar and pour over one teaspoon each of pineapple, lemon juice and sherry. Sprinkle with chopped mint and garnish with an upright spring of mint in the center of the glass.
WATERMELON COCKTAIL With a vegetable cutter prepare small balls of bright pink watermelon, having the balls no larger than marbles. Chill thoroughly. Drain the liquor from a small bottle of Maraschino cherries, chill, and at serving time pour over the watermelon balls. Garnish with mint. A pretty fancy is to moisten the edge of each cocktail glass, before filling. Invert the glass in finely chopped mint. This will leave a line of green adhering to the edge of the glass.
Two chilled fruit cocktails meant to open a meal, both built on the same idea: cold fruit, a little sweetening, a herb garnish. Neither involves heat, so the work is all in the knife and the chilling.
- Sectioning the orangeThe book means freeing the segments and trimming away the thin membrane, close to what is now called supreming. Scissors work, but a small sharp paring knife over a bowl is quicker and catches the juice. "Rather sour" probably points to a tart eating orange rather than a Seville, though the book does not say.
- "Powdered sugar"In American books of this period the term usually means a fine-ground sugar between granulated and today's confectioners' sugar, and the two were not consistently distinguished. Either superfine or confectioners' sugar will do; confectioners' contains cornstarch and will cloud the juice slightly.
- "One teaspoon each of pineapple"Pineapple juice is meant, not fruit. Canned pineapple juice is closer to the period product than fresh, which contains active bromelain and tastes sharper.
- The sherryA teaspoon per serving is a seasoning, not a drink. A dry or medium sherry balances the sugar; cream sherry will make the cup cloying. Omitting it costs the dish little beyond a bit of depth.
- Vegetable cutterIn practice a ball cutter, what we would call a melon baller. Marble-size means the small end, roughly half to three-quarters of an inch. Seedless watermelon makes the job far easier than the seeded fruit the original cook had.
- Maraschino cherry liquorThe syrup from the jar, not maraschino liqueur. Modern maraschino cherries are brined, bleached and dyed, and their syrup is largely corn syrup and colouring, likely sweeter than the period product; use a light hand or substitute a spoonful of the fruit's own juice with a dash of cherry liqueur.
- ChillingBoth cups depend on the fruit being genuinely cold, not merely cool. An hour in the coldest part of the refrigerator, and chill the glasses too; the mint rim sticks better to a cold, damp glass.
- YieldOne orange fills one cocktail glass. For the watermelon, a wedge of about two pounds gives four to six small servings once trimmed.
Fruit cocktails of this kind were a fixture of the formal American first course from the 1890s through the 1920s, taking a place once held by the oyster or clam that traditionally opened a dinner. The word cocktail attached itself to these fruit cups by analogy with the mixed drink, and it is often said that this is why a teaspoon of sherry appears in a dish that is otherwise a bowl of orange sections. The Butterick Cook Book, published by the dress-pattern company as part of its wide line of household literature, was aimed squarely at the middle-class hostess trying to reproduce restaurant service at home, and the fussy touches here the scissors, the frosted rim of chopped mint, the upright sprig are characteristic of that ambition: the recipe is mostly instructions on how the thing should look.