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Fruit Punch
4 cups hot water. 2 cups sugar. 1 small can chopped pineapple Juice of 3 lemons Juice of 4 oranges 1 bottle carbonated water Prepare a syrup of the water and sugar and boil fifteen minutes, cool, add fruit and carbonated water. Serve ice-cold.
Juice of 3 lemons
A straightforward citrus punch, but the ingredient list has clearly lost a line in printing: the sugar and water for the syrup are called for in the method and never given a quantity. Everything else is workable.
- The missing syrupNo amounts are given for the sugar and water. A serviceable ratio for punch is equal parts by volume — 1 cup sugar to 1 cup water — but the original is genuinely silent here, so sweeten to taste against your fruit.
- Fifteen minutes of boilingThat long a boil reduces a simple syrup noticeably and makes it thicker and sweeter than needed here. Sugar dissolves fully in about two minutes at a simmer; boil longer only if you want a concentrate you expect to dilute.
- A small can of pineappleIn this period that probably means something in the 8 oz range, though can sizes were not standard. Modern crushed pineapple in juice is the closest match; add the packing juice as well.
- YieldWith one bottle of carbonated water this makes somewhere around six to eight cups, though the missing syrup quantity makes any figure approximate. For a party bowl, scale up and hold back the carbonated water until serving.
- Carbonated water"One bottle" is unspecified; bottles of the period ran to something in the pint-to-quart range. Plain seltzer is meant, not a sweetened soda. Add it last and do not stir vigorously or the fizz is wasted.
- CitrusThree lemons and four oranges yield roughly 1/2 cup and 1 cup of juice respectively with today's fruit. Strain out pulp and seeds if you want a clear punch.
- Serving coldChill the punch itself rather than loading the bowl with cubes, which dilute it as they melt. A block of ice, or a ring frozen from some of the punch, holds temperature without watering it down.
- The duplicated line"Juice of 3 lemons" appears twice in the printed text. It is a typesetting repeat, not a second addition.
The Metropolitan Cook Book was one of the free booklets Metropolitan Life Insurance Company sent to policyholders in the early twentieth century, part of a broad welfare-and-hygiene campaign that also produced pamphlets on health subjects such as tuberculosis and infant care. That context sits well with the beverage chapter: fruit punches, lemonades and "fruit cups" fitted the temperance-leaning tone of such publications, and canned pineapple — cheap, shelf-stable and increasingly abundant as Hawaiian canneries scaled up in the 1900s and 1910s — made a tropical-tasting punch possible in a city kitchen. Bottled carbonated water was a grocery item by then as well as a druggist's line.