I want to do a quick post today about cactus fruit lemonade because I know that not everyone lives near prickly pear cactus. In our part of Texas, prickly pear can quickly overrun an area and become a problem. Kept under control, the plants are useful and beautiful. Cactus flowers are some of my favorite flowers here and you can use most of the plant as food if it is prepared correctly. The most difficult part is dealing with the cactus spines.

My 14 year old son got up early today to harvest some cactus fruit, and I woke up to freshly made cactus fruit lemonade. It’s light and refreshing and has a flavor that is somewhere between watermelon and cucumber. It’s perfect for a hot August day.

Below are some images of the flowers and of the cactus fruit. Aren’t the flowers lovely?

To wrap up drink week, I wanted to add this fun recipe. It’s also from the 1942 edition of The New American Cook Book. I’ll include the paragraph from the book so you can see how the idea was presented.

Results

I chose pineapple juice and Concord grape juice. These drinks turned out so nice. They were very pretty with their two-tone colors that slowly swirled together. The flavor was well balanced. You could taste both the grape and pineapple juices. You can definitely taste the pineapple, though, so if you have some pineapple haters in your bunch, you might want to have a second option available for them.

The colors stayed separated as long as we didn’t stir them together. It seemed to mix from the bottom up. We used straws, so the top of the drink stayed separated until we were nearly finished, but we were drinking from the mixed bottom part of the glass. I’m including a couple of pictures of the drink after it had been sitting for a while.

This was a fun way to use two pantry staples. It was also an affordable way to have a fancy looking drink in 1942. I like how the cookbook mentioned Hawaii. I imagine that was very timely after the war began.

Thanks for coming along on my drink journey this week. I’ve found some interesting recipes. Maybe I’ll do this again when it gets cold this winter. If you want to check out the other drinks from this week, you can find them below. See you Monday!

Presidential Punch

Glorified Lemonade

Pineapple Fizz

Orange Julep

Today I’m sharing two versions of one drink with you. The recipe is again from the 1942 edition of The New American Cook Book. If you’d like to start at the beginning of Drink Week, check out yesterday’s Presidential Punch.

Glorified Lemonade

• 2 c sugar
• 3 c water
• 3 lemons, juice
• 2 limes, juice
• 2 c orange or lemon carbonated beverage or ginger ale

Boil sugar and water 10 minutes. Cool. Add juice of lemons and limes, and the orange or lemon beverage or ginger ale. Serves 6.

Results: Ginger Ale Version

I added ginger ale to the first batch of glorified lemonade. It was incredibly sweet. I mainly drink unsweetened beverages so, thinking I might be overreacting to the sweetness, I gave some to the rest of my family. No one wanted to finish their drink because of the sweetness. We also all thought it wasn’t as lemony as we expected it would be. We decided to try a second version, but this time we would cut the sugar in half. Using that much sugar in a drink would definitely not be feasible after sugar rationing began in the spring of 1942. Since this recipe is from a 1942 cookbook, it isn’t a stretch to think this lemonade just wasn’t made or was adapted to fit new cooking needs.

Results: Carbonated Orange Beverage Version

One cup of sugar would still be a lot for a housewife to use for a drink recipe in 1942, but it is half of what the original recipe called for. The resulting drink was orange flavored, but still very, very sweet. That’s still so much sugar for a recipe that serves 6, especially combined with orange soda. To be able to drink this, we would have to cut even more sugar. I wonder if the recipe actually contains a misprint. Yesterday’s drink recipe served 20 and called for 2 tablespoons of sugar. I might test this theory again in the future, but right now I think I’m ready to move on to something else.

Also, I need to find a new place to take drink photos. Photographing beverages is a challenge! I’ll see what I can come up with so you don’t see the same background every day this week. Happy Tuesday!

Other drinks in the series:

Pineapple Fizz

Orange Julep

Two-Tone Drinks

Summer weather has arrived with a vengeance. I’m trying to find a new drink to help us cool off. I have some new cookbooks with drink recipes, and I thought I’d try a few out and share them with you. I’m getting the ones I’m trying this week from the 1942 edition of The New American Cook Book. Let’s hope one of them is the refreshing thirst quencher I’m looking for.

Presidential Punch

Usually this time of year our house is filled with kids and their friends, and I’m always looking for a punch recipe that serves a crowd. There are nine of us in my family, so we still are a small crowd by ourselves. This punch recipes serves 20. I don’t think it would be difficult to cut it in half if you want to try it without the crowd.

• mint sprigs
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 pint strong lemonade
• 1 bottle grape carbonated beverage
• 1 bottle orange carbonated beverage
• 1 bottle ginger ale
• 1 pint plain or charged water

Select long stemmed sprays of mint and pinch the stems between the fingers until the sprigs give the most flavor. Put these into a deep pitcher half filled with ice or arranged in a punch bowl with ice upon them. Over these, sprinkle sugar and let set for half an hour. Pour in the lemonade, water, grape carbonated beverage, orange carbonated beverage, and ginger ale.

Results

This punch was just ok. It tasted like watered down grape soda, or perhaps grape Kool-Aid. I think that the mixture can be played with a little to make it taste the way you like it. The combination of ingredients made this taste a bit muddy. I don’t think we’ll try it again. I’m also not sure why this was called Presidential Punch. I found several different drinks with the same or similar names, but they weren’t the same as this drink.

Perhaps tomorrow’s recipe will be more successful. Happy Memorial Day to my American readers.

I’ll add the rest of the series here as I go:

Glorified Lemonade

Pineapple Fizz

Orange Julep

Two-Tone Fruit Drinks

I’m splitting up the beverage and dessert today because this is grocery day and I need ingredients for my dessert. I’m hopeful that my local store will have what I need. I’ve heard rumors that they even have toilet paper!

Today’s recipe comes from the booklet 300 Tasty, Healthful Dairy Dishes published by the Culinary Arts Institute in 1940. I was looking for something different to try, so I thought I’d make this shake recipe. It’s not a shake like we know now. It’s more of a flavored milk drink with ginger ale.

Ginger Pear Shake

• 1 8oz can pears
• 1 qt milk
• Ginger Ale

Press pears though sieve. Mix pulp and juice, add milk, and pour into tall glasses. Fill glasses with ginger ale.

Results

I’m disappointed in this drink. I love pears, so I was excited to try a drink with pears in it. The shake tasted like milk and ginger ale, and was a little too chunky for me. We tried with different amounts of ginger ale, and didn’t like any of them. We also tried without the ginger ale and it just tasted like milk. This is one recipe I don’t recommend. If you are looking for a period drink, there are several others on the blog that are delicious. Click the drink tab for more ideas.

Don’t forget to join us on Instagram! There’s still time to cook with us!

It was really warm here today, and I wanted to find a cold drink recipe to enjoy outside. I found an interesting one, but I’ll be honest–we modernized the instructions. I very rarely do that when I’m working with historical recipes. I try to keep the methods as historically accurate as possible. We turned this recipe into a modern milkshake by putting all of the ingredients in a blender, but I still wanted to share it with you.

The recipe comes from a 48-page booklet published by the Culinary Arts Institute in 1940. It’s called The Dairy Book and it is part of a series of specialty cookbooks that include titles about breads, candies, leftovers, and so on. The cookbook was created to provide home front housewives a variety of recipes that helped add milk to the diet, something the introduction stated was hard to find at the time. The cookbook has a variety of recipes that range from desserts and beverages like today’s Frosted Apricot Milk to appetizers, soups, and entrees.

Frosted Apricot Milk

• 1 c cooked apricots and juice
• 3 c milk
• 1/2 pint vanilla ice cream

Press apricots through a sieve. Mix apricot pulp and milk. Put ice cream in a pitcher. Pour milk mixture over ice cream. Stir until slightly mixed. Serves 4-6.

Results

We pureed the apricots in a food processor. Then we put the milk, apricots, and ice cream in the blender and mixed it well. If you followed the recipe it would be a lumpier mixture, but we really like the smooth texture of a milkshake. The apricot flavor was mild. If you make this, you might consider adjusting the amount of apricots to add more flavor.

This was an easy milkshake recipe for today. Using a blender and food processor is much less labor-intensive than using a sieve and stirring by hand. I think it’s valuable to occasionally make these recipes in a more modern way. Adapting recipes makes it easier to add them to our repertoire of dishes we eat in our everyday lives, keeping old-style, often forgotten recipes alive for more generations to enjoy.

One last note: Warm pureed apricots also make a nice sundae topping.

Let me know if you try this recipe. Which method did you use?