Mulled apple juice delivers holiday cheer By: Eva Wasney Posted: 6:00 AM CST Saturday, Dec. 17, 2022

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/12/2022 (1373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Cinnamon, cloves and warm apples — throw a pot of this mulled apple juice on the stove and your home will be smelling like holiday cheer in no time.

This 1962 recipe is another from Free Press food editor Norah Cherry, who was responsible for yesterday’s temperamental divinity fudge experiment. We’re back on speaking terms thanks to this cosy and fuss-free beverage.

Cherry (the perfect surname for a food writer) was a trained home economist and the paper’s longest reigning food editor. Her column, “Cooking with Norah Cherry,” ran several times a week from 1954 to ’71 and she gained a reputation as a modest person and a talented cook — “a real auntie type,” recalls one editor.

She focused on traditional western meals, themed dinners and made a big to-do about religious holidays, like Easter and Christmas. Proper party hosting seemed to be an area of specialty.

Along with her assertion that homemade candies be placed in decorative bowls throughout the home for visitors to enjoy, Cherry was a proponent of punch bowls filled with hot or cold drink during the holiday.

“Punch or eggnog seems the appropriate beverage when friends drop in to wish us the season’s greetings,” she writes. But don’t forget the snacks. “Plates of cheese straws, holiday cookies and fruit cake add to gracious hospitality.”

Cherry fit the era’s established image of a homemaker — matronly, quaint, proper — but like her predecessor, Madeline Day, she was unmarried and died on her 63rd birthday, shortly after leaving the paper, from an illness. Her legacy lives on in thousands of recipes and hundreds of stories about issues affecting home cooks during her nearly two-decade tenure with the paper.

A toast to you, Ms. Cherry; this cider is delightful.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

 

Mulled Apple Juice, 1962

135 fl oz (4 L) apple juice
2 sticks cinnamon
8 whole cloves
1/4 cup (60 ml) brown sugar*
6 small whole apples
2 tbsp (30 ml ) lemon juice

Place apple juice in a large saucepan. Add cinnamon, whole cloves and brown sugar. Wash and polish apples, add to juice.

Cook over medium heat until juice is hot and apples are tender.

Lift out apples with a perforated skimmer and place in a punch bowl. Strain hot apple juice over the apples and add lemon juice. Serve hot in mugs. Yields about 20 servings.

Recipe by Norah Cherry

*Note: The digitized scan of this page isn’t great. The quantity of brown sugar is unclear, start with 1/4 cup and adjust to your taste.