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Grandmother's Harvest Drink
One quart of water, table-spoon sifted ginger, three heaping table-spoons sugar, half pint vinegar.
This is switchel, or haymaker's punch, given as bare proportions with no method. Combine everything, stir until the sugar dissolves, and chill; that is the whole procedure.
- The vinegar is the variableHalf a pint (1 cup) of vinegar to a quart of water is sharp by modern taste, and household vinegar of the period varied in strength and was not standardized as today's 5% cider vinegar is. Start with half that amount and add more to taste.
- MeasuresA quart is 4 cups, a half pint 1 cup. The whole batch is about 1 1/4 quarts, enough for four to six glasses over ice.
- Ginger"Sifted ginger" means dried ground ginger passed through a sieve to break up lumps, not fresh root. A tablespoon is a lot of dry powder; it will not dissolve and will settle, so stir before pouring or steep it in a little hot water first and strain.
- SugarThree heaping tablespoons is roughly 1/4 to 1/3 cup. Molasses or maple syrup, both traditional in switchel, can replace it measure for measure and give a rounder flavor.
- Rest itThe drink is markedly better after an hour or two in the refrigerator, which lets the ginger bloom and takes the raw edge off the vinegar. Serve very cold.
- ServingSwitchel was traditionally carried to the field in a jug and drunk as mixed. If you find it aggressive, pour it over plenty of ice or top with sparkling water.
Switchel — also called haymaker's punch, ginger-water or harvest drink — was a common hot-weather field beverage of rural America from the eighteenth century onward, carried to the mowers in a stone jug. Vinegar, sugar or molasses, water and ginger was thought to quench thirst better than plain water and to be gentler on a laboring body than the cider or rum that often took its place; the same acid-and-sugar logic underlies the shrubs and "vinegar drinks" that fill the beverage chapters of period cookbooks. Its appearance under a grandmother's name suggests the sort of thing recorded because a family remembered the proportions, not because a confectioner published them.