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Apple Punch
Put into a bowl an apple sliced, half a lemon sliced, and a table-spoonful of icing sugar. Add a bottle of claret, cover, and let it stand for three hours; then strain, and put in a small lump of ice. Serve in claret glasses.
A cold wine infusion rather than a true punch — nothing is heated, and the only work is slicing and waiting. The hinge is the three-hour limit: leave the lemon in overnight and the pith turns the whole bowl bitter.
- ClaretIn a British book of this period claret means red Bordeaux, or any dry, moderately tannic red of that style. A cheap fruity Merlot or Cabernet blend does the job; nothing oaky, and nothing you would want to drink neat and undiluted.
- Bottle sizeA Victorian wine bottle was close enough to today's 750 ml. That gives about six 4 oz servings; claret glasses of the period were small stemmed glasses, generally holding rather less than a modern wine pour.
- Icing sugarIcing sugar is confectioners' or powdered sugar. It dissolves readily in cold wine, which may be why it is specified here; a tablespoon in a whole bottle is barely sweet, so taste before serving and add more if the wine is austere.
- The appleNo variety is named. A firm tart apple holds its slices for three hours; a soft one collapses into sediment. Leave the peel on for colour and slice across the core so the pieces stay intact in the bowl.
- Lemon and the three hoursHalf a lemon sliced with its rind gives up most of its aroma early on. Left much longer, the pith can leach a bitterness that sugar will not cover, which may be the point of straining the fruit out rather than letting it sit in the finished drink.
- The iceOne lump, added after straining, chills with less dilution than crushed ice. Victorian ice was sold in blocks and broken into lumps for table use. Chilling the strained wine in the refrigerator and serving over a single large cube achieves the same and is easier to control.
- CoveringCover with a plate or plastic wrap rather than just a cloth; three hours of air on an open bowl of red wine may dull it somewhat.
Punches in the eighteenth-century sense demanded spirit, citrus, sugar, water and spice — the five parts often said to give the word its name from the Hindustani panch, five. What is described here is closer to what the Germans call a Bowle and the Spanish sangría: wine steeped briefly with fruit and sugar and served cold. Its presence in a late-Victorian household book reflects two practical facts of the 1880s and 1890s. Claret was cheap and abundant in Britain after the Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1860 lowered duties on French wine, and block ice had become an ordinary purchase in towns, delivered by ice merchants and kept in the household ice chest.