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Raspberry Punch
The juice of two lemons, two cups of raspberries and two cups of currants. Strain, and without taking the pulp from the cloth, put into another dish and over it pour one quart of boiling water. Drain off but do not squeeze or it will be muddy. Add two cups of sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved. Cool thoroughly before adding the juice and three cups of tea. This may bear more water, but the melting ice dilutes it. Canned raspberries may be used and currant jelly, heated and diluted with water, may be added.
MOCK CAFÉ PARFAIT-Partially fill tall glasses with shaved ice. Fill to within an inch of the top with cold coffee diluted with cream and slightly sweetened. Place unsweetened whipped cream on top and serve with long handled spoons.
CHILLED GRAPE JUICE (Purple Grapes) - Wash grapes and boil until skin, pulp and seeds separate. Press through jelly bag and to every pint of juice add one quarter pint of sugar. Boil for twenty minutes and bottle.
LIMEADE-Limeade is made the same as lemonade; a little more sugar is needed than for lemons. This is very refreshing and preferable to lemonade in the summer.
GRAPE HIGH BALL (Niagara Grapes) - Use the light colored Niagara grapes. Proceed as for recipe for Chilled Grape Juice. Serve in tall glasses half filled with shaved ice and add equal quantity of charged water.
A cluster of summer drinks printed as one block; the raspberry punch is the main recipe and the rest are short variations on iced beverages. Nothing here is difficult, but several quantities are left to the cook's judgment.
- Do not squeeze the bagThis is the hinge of the punch. The recipe's warning comes at the hot-water rinse: "Drain off but do not squeeze or it will be muddy." Pressing the pulp forces fine solids through and the finished drink turns cloudy and dull. Let it drip through on its own rather than hurrying it.
- The teaThree cups of tea, brewed and cooled; black tea is the likely intention, though the recipe does not say. The recipe directs that the syrup be cooled thoroughly before the juice and tea go in.
- CurrantsRed currants, not the dried Zante currants sold for baking. Fresh ones are seasonal and scarce in most markets; frozen red currants work, and the recipe's own suggestion of currant jelly heated and diluted with water is a reasonable stand-in, though it gives no quantity.
- YieldRoughly two quarts of finished punch before ice. The recipe notes it "may bear more water," but adds that the melting ice dilutes it in any case.
- Shaved iceBoth the mock parfait and the grape high ball assume shaved or finely crushed ice, which chills fast and dilutes fast. A few seconds in a food processor or a canvas bag and a mallet gives the right texture; cubes will not fill the glass the same way.
- Mock cafe parfaitCold brewed coffee, not espresso, cut with cream to taste and barely sweetened. The whipped cream on top is deliberately unsweetened so the drink is not cloying. It is a drink, not a frozen dessert, despite the name.
- Grape juice proportionsA quarter pint of sugar to a pint of juice is a half cup per two cups, which by modern taste is very sweet; less will do. Twenty minutes at a boil will also drive off much of the fresh grape aroma.
- Bottling the grape juice"Bottle" here means filling hot jars and sealing, with no processing time given. Grape juice is high-acid and keeps well when handled properly, but follow a current tested canning procedure for jar preparation and water-bath time rather than this line, or simply refrigerate the juice and use it within a week.
- LimeadeNo proportions are given; the recipe simply refers back to lemonade and says a little more sugar is needed than for lemons.
Raspberry punch of this kind, fruit juice extended with tea and sugar and served from a bowl over ice, was standard at church socials, lawn parties and receptions in the years when temperance sentiment made an alcohol-free punch the safe choice for a mixed gathering; the tea may be read as supplying the tannic backbone that wine would otherwise have given, though that is an interpretation rather than a documented intention. The "high ball" and "mock cafe parfait" names look like the same joke from the other direction, borrowing the vocabulary of the bar and the soda fountain for drinks that contain neither spirits nor ice cream. Niagara, the grape named alongside the purple grapes of the recipe, was a nineteenth-century American variety widely planted for the arbor and the home press, and bottled unfermented grape juice had become a familiar household product by the time this book appeared.