Food History

The last thing Mary had to say about the drinks testing was that she was going to bed to sleep it all off. Before she drifted away from the 1920s, however, she tested one final drink for us. This time she included audio signals, like so: “[sound effects of Mary whacking ice cubes in a plastic bag with the bottom of a jar]“.

There have definitely been changes in size and perhaps shape of glasses since the 1920s. Mary pointed out that “My champagne flutes are only 6 oz. in capacity, so by the time I’d added everything else, there was hardly room for even a jigger of ginger ale. That seemed to throw the proportions off completely. So we dumped our [name of drink, mysteriously cut by Gillian] into Collins glasses and added more ginger ale on top.

This did *not* work! ”

I ought to look into this one day, but for Conflux we’ll just use what the hotel provides.

Anyhow, Mary provided scoring and some extra notes on processes, which you need because you must share the mental vision of so much jam. The scoring suggests that this cocktail gets deleted. Mary thinks it has potential, but Steve made a face and Andrew gave it only 2/5.

To finish off her reports with a flourish, here’s “The (long) Saga of the Syrup”

Steve and I head out to pick up a small bottle of Torani’s raspberry syrup. We wind up at the local warehouse and restaurant supply store, which caters to local small coffee houses and therefore stocks every flavor of Torani’s syrup. Normally the warehouse store has a selection of small bottles — but not this time! The smallest amount of raspberry syrup we can buy is… a quart! Now, it’s not correct to say that my dear husband is a cheapskate… but he does display the same abhorrence of waste and unnecessary expense stereotypically attributed to his Celtic ancestors. So Steve gives me the Fish Eye (TM) at the thought of buying an entire quart of raspberry syrup to make a mere three cocktails. What to do, what to do? Aha! Thinking quickly, I grab a jar of raspberry jam. “Look, sweetheart! I can dilute it with a bit of hot water and cook it down to a syrup, and we’re sure to eat the rest of it on toast and such. Okay?” Okay!
Saturday and Sunday then proceed to break records for high temperatures. (The three of us go out to see a movie just to be someplace with air conditioning!) Only this evening is it finally cool enough to think about using the stove. I proceed as follows:
- Put a cup or so of raspberry jam into a saucepan.
- Add hot water from the tea kettle.
- Stir till jam is dissolved.
- Pass resulting solution through a fine mesh strainer to remove the seeds.
- Simmer solution carefully until it’s reduced to a syrup, using low heat, because if I scorch this batch, I’ll have to do it all over again!
- Grab wide-mouthed canning funnel and nearest clean glass jar.
- Fill jar with alarmingly liquid syrup and put it in the fridge to cool and (hopefully) thicken.
Results: Syrup thickened and held its flavor fairly well, though I still think Torani’s would have been better. We now have enough raspberry jam to last through a month of breakfasts and several batches of jam tarts. (I did mention that we went to a warehouse store… )”

Until the last tests come in, that’s it for alcohol! Thank you, Mary.