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Champagne Cup
Mrs. Bendelari.
One quart bottle of champagne. two bottles of soda water, one liqueur glass of brandy, two tablespoons of powdered sugar, a few thin strips of cucumber rind ; make this just in time for use, and add a large piece of ice.
A Victorian summer "cup" — sparkling wine lengthened with soda and lightly perfumed rather than sweetened into a punch. It comes together in two minutes, and the only real skill is restraint.
- Make it cold, make it lastThe instruction to "make this just in time for use" is the hinge. Chill the champagne and soda hard beforehand; anything mixed in advance goes flat and flabby. Assemble in the serving pitcher at the table.
- A liqueur glass of brandyA liqueur or cordial glass of the period held roughly 1 fl oz, so about 2 tablespoons. It is a seasoning here, not a base spirit.
- Two bottles of soda waterGenuinely ambiguous. Nineteenth-century soda bottles ran from small splits of about 6 oz up to pints, so two bottles could mean anywhere from roughly 1.5 to 4 cups; add to taste so the wine is lengthened but not drowned.
- Powdered sugarIn period usage this generally means finely ground sugar, closer to today's superfine or caster than to modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Superfine dissolves cleanly in cold liquid; granulated will sit at the bottom.
- Cucumber rindPare thin strips with a peeler, taking as little flesh as possible, and drop them in at the last moment. The recipe specifies no steeping time; long contact turns the note vegetal.
- The large piece of iceA single big lump rather than cubes. Block ice was the form the period had, and a larger piece has less surface area and so dilutes more slowly. A frozen quart container of water or a large ice sphere does the same job.
- YieldRoughly 1.5 quarts finished, depending on how much soda water is used; six to eight small cupfuls.
- The wine to useNothing expensive. A dry sparkling wine with decent acidity holds up to the sugar and soda; a good vintage champagne is wasted the moment the soda water goes in.
Cups — claret cup, cider cup, champagne cup — were light, iced drinks of the Anglo-American summer table, generally wine-based and only lightly sweetened. Cucumber rind is a common signature of the form: it appears in English cup recipes through the middle of the nineteenth century. The Home Cook Book (Chicago, 1876) was compiled from recipes credited to named contributors and sold in aid of charity, and Mrs. Bendelari's terse entry is typical of the genre.