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One Quart Champagne Cup
Place in bottom of a pitcher the juice of a lemon, a sliced orange, some small pieces pineapple, two sprays mint and the rind of a cucumber. Pour over one bottle plain soda and allow to infuse for fifteen minutes. Half fill the pitcher with ice, add two tablespoons pulverized sugar, two sherry glasses red curacao and a quart champagne (to be opened at the table), stir well with ladle and serve in fancy wine glasses.
A standard hotel-bar champagne cup, built in the pitcher rather than shaken. The whole point is that the fruit and cucumber infuse into the soda first, so the champagne goes in last and stays lively.
- Sherry glassA sherry glass of the period is about 2 fl oz, so two glasses of curaçao is roughly 1/2 cup. That is a light hand for a full quart of wine plus soda; taste before adding all of it.
- Red curaçaoRed curacao -- An orange liqueur tinted red, most likely with cochineal or carmine, sold alongside white and orange versions. Any decent orange curacao or triple sec gives the same flavour; only the colour is lost.
- Plain sodaA "bottle" of soda here means a small bottle of the period, well under a modern litre; sizes varied. Use plain carbonated water, not club soda with added minerals if you can help it.
- Pulverized sugarSuperfine (caster) sugar, ground finer than granulated so it dissolves without syrup. Two tablespoons is modest; the curaçao carries most of the sweetness.
- Cucumber rindOnly the peel goes in, and it is a common marker of a cup rather than a punch. Pare it thin and pull it out before serving if the flavour turns green and bitter.
- Champagne at the tableOpening the bottle at the pitcher is not theatre for its own sake. Pouring cold wine over ice that has already chilled the base keeps the bubbles; a bottle opened early and left standing gives a flat cup.
- IceHalf a pitcher of ice means large lumps or a block, which melt slowly. Modern small cubes dilute much faster, so use the largest pieces you have and serve promptly.
- YieldA quart of champagne plus soda, fruit and liqueur comes to roughly six cups of liquid before dilution; how many glasses that fills depends on their size.
Cups are the summer end of the English drinking repertoire: a bottle of wine, something aromatic, ice and soda, stirred in a jug and drunk from small glasses rather than tumblers. Claret cup and cider cup were the everyday versions; champagne cup was the one that appeared at weddings, race meetings and hotel suppers. The cucumber rind is a common marker of the form -- it appears in English cup recipes through the nineteenth century and was carried into American hotel bartending. The instruction to open the champagne at the table reflects a period when a cup was mixed in front of guests, and the fifteen-minute infusion of fruit in plain soda builds flavour without letting the wine go flat while it waits.