Mint Julep
To be made in the genuine old Virginia fashion, the julep should be mixed in the individual glasses. Into each glass or lemonade cups, put two lumps of sugar and three sprays of fresh garden mint. Have ready finely crushed ice, and with this fill the glasses, shaking it around until the sugar is dissolved and the mint well bruised. Add enough water to nearly fill the glasses (shaking it around until the sugar is dissolved) and into each one put a tablespoonful of the best whisky. Stir the contents of each glass well once, and the julep is ready to drink. The same proportions should be observed if the julep is made in quantity in a punch bowl.
A notably restrained julep by modern standards: a tablespoon of whisky per glass and enough water to fill. The technique is sound, but the proportions belong to a period when a julep was closer to a cooling drink than a cocktail.
- The hinge: bruise, don't shredThe mint is crushed against the sugar and ice, which releases oil from the leaf surface without tearing the tissue. Pounding mint to a pulp pulls out chlorophyll and a grassy bitterness that no amount of whisky covers.
- Lumps of sugarLumps cut from a sugar loaf varied in size; a modern cube runs about a teaspoon, so two lumps is roughly two teaspoons. Granulated sugar dissolves far more readily in cold liquid than a hard lump does; superfine or a spoonful of simple syrup gives much the same result with less shaking.
- "Three sprays"Sprays means sprigs, each with several leaves on the stem. Modern practice puts the tender leaves in the glass and saves an unbruised sprig for the top, planted close to the drinking edge so the aroma reaches the nose.
- "The best whisky""The best whisky" in this period would most likely have meant a straight bourbon or rye rather than the cheaper rectified neutral-spirit blends then widely sold as whisky; federal standards for what could be labelled whisky were still being fought over in these years. Either bourbon or rye suits the drink.
- The proportions are unusually weakOne tablespoon is half a fluid ounce. A julep as poured today runs 2 to 2.5 ounces of whisky with no added water, the dilution coming entirely from the ice as it melts. Following the text as written yields a mint-flavored sugar water with a trace of spirit.
- IceFinely crushed, not cubed. Crush it in a canvas bag with a mallet or pulse it in a food processor, then pack the glass firmly; a loose fill collapses and the drink goes watery within minutes.
- The vesselSilver or pewter cups are traditional because the metal frosts, and they are held by the base or the rim so the frost survives. A tall glass or the "lemonade cup" mentioned here works, but chill it first.
- In quantityA punch bowl of julep dilutes fast as the crushed ice melts across the whole batch. If serving a crowd, build the mint and sugar base ahead and finish each glass individually.
The julep name traces back through Arabic jul u0101b and Persian gul u0101b, rose water, and entered English medicine as a sweetened liquid used to carry a dose; it is often said to have become, in early America, a morning dram of spirits, sugar and water, with mint the Virginia and Maryland refinement. Ice is what turned it into the drink recognized today: commercial ice harvesting and delivery made crushed ice available to ordinary households through the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s could assume a reader had some on hand. The insistence here on "the genuine old Virginia fashion" and on building in individual glasses reflects a long-running regional argument over the drink, which Kentucky's association with bourbon and the Derby would eventually win in the public mind. That a general-purpose household cookbook prints it at all is worth noting; national prohibition would push recipes like this out of the mainstream American kitchen manual for a generation.