Home › Our Susan's Opinion of a Kitchen › Claret Cup
Claret Cup
Mrs. Bendelari.
One quart bottle of claret, one bottle of soda water, one lemon cut very thin, four tablespoons of powdered sugar, quarter of a teaspoon of grated nutmeg, one liqueur glass of brandy, one wine glass of sherry wine. Half an hour before it is to be used, put in a large piece of ice, so that it may get perfectly cold.
A Victorian wine cup, assembled cold and diluted with soda. The only real work is timing and temperature.
- ClaretClaret meant red Bordeaux, and in the 1870s a lighter, lower-alcohol one than most bottles sold today. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; a standard 750 ml bottle is close enough to the "quart bottle" called for.
- Bottle of soda waterA period bottle or siphon of soda water was generally smaller than the large modern bottle, though sizes varied a good deal. Start with about 1 1/2 cups and taste before adding more.
- Glass measuresA liqueur glass is about 1 fluid ounce, so that is roughly 2 tablespoons of brandy. A wine glass in nineteenth-century American cookbooks is about 2 fluid ounces of sherry, sometimes a little more.
- Powdered sugarHere this means finely ground sugar for quick dissolving, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar on shelves now. Superfine or caster sugar behaves as intended; granulated will work if you stir it into the wine before the soda goes in.
- LemonCut very thin means paper-thin whole slices, peel included, for oil as much as juice. Left to stand a long while, the pith can turn the cup bitter, so lift the slices out if you are holding it longer.
- The iceThe single large piece is the point: it chills without watering the cup down the way cubes do. Freeze water in a loaf pan or bowl. Note that the recipe has the whole cup standing on ice for half an hour; if you want the carbonation to survive, add the soda water nearer to serving.
- YieldAbout six to eight small cups. Traditionally served in a glass jug with a few sprigs of mint or borage over the top.
Wine "cups" were a familiar warm-weather drink of the English and American middle-class household through the nineteenth century, and claret cup was among them: a bottle of red wine stretched with soda, sweetened, spiced lightly, and fortified with a little brandy and sherry so it did not taste merely watered. The Home Cook Book was compiled from contributions by Chicago ladies, and the attribution to Mrs. Bendelari is typical of the genre; the value of such books lay in the names attached, each recipe carrying the reputation of the household that supplied it.