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Gin Punch
Peel very thinly the rind of a large lemon, and put it, with a table-spoonful of the juice, into a bowl. Pour over it two table-spoonfuls of pounded loaf sugar, and one pint of fresh spring water. Let it stand for half an hour. Then add half a pint of gin, a wine-glassful of maraschino, and two table-spoonfuls of pounded ice. Just before serving, add two bottles of soda-water. Time, about three-quarters of an hour to prepare. Sufficient for two quarts of punch.
A late-Victorian gin punch built on an oleo-saccharum: the sugar and lemon peel steeping together is the whole point of the half-hour wait. A few of the measures need translating before you scale it.
- The hinge: the steepSugar, peel and juice sitting together for half an hour (here with the water added at the same time, so a weaker extraction than a sugar-only maceration) draws some of the oil out of the rind and is what separates this from gin and soda with a lemon slice. Do not shortcut it, and pare the zest thinly enough that no white pith goes in, or the punch turns bitter.
- Loaf sugarSugar was sold in hard cones and broken and pounded as needed. Caster or superfine sugar is the direct equivalent; two tablespoons is about 25 g.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books this is reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml), not the capacity of a modern wine glass. Measure it rather than pouring by eye.
- MaraschinoThis means a dry, clear cherry-pit liqueur of the Luxardo or Maraska type, roughly 30 per cent alcohol. The sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries is a different product entirely and will make the punch cloying.
- Soda-water bottlesPeriod soda bottles held around 6 to 7 fl oz, so "two bottles" is about 12 to 14 fl oz (350-400 ml). Two modern 12 oz cans will overshoot and thin the drink.
- The ginGin in this period was often Old Tom, lightly sweetened and rounder than London dry. A London dry will read noticeably drier here; a touch more sugar in the steep compensates.
- IceTwo tablespoons of pounded ice is a gesture toward chilling, not a serving of ice; ice was still a relative luxury in a domestic kitchen. Chill the water, gin and soda beforehand instead, and add ice to the glasses.
- YieldTwo quarts (about 2.3 litres imperial) gives roughly eight to ten cups. Add the soda at the table, not before; it goes flat quickly in an open bowl.
Punch reached Britain with the East India trade and by the nineteenth century had settled into a domestic ritual of five parts: spirit, citrus, sugar, water and spice or flavouring. Gin punch in particular is associated with London club and tavern culture of the 1830s onward, the best-known version being the Garrick Club punch, variously credited to Stephen Price and to Theodore Hook, which likewise leaned on maraschino to round out the raw edge of the spirit. Cassell's places it among the plainer beverages a household could produce without a cellar or a professional barman: no heating, no eggs, no imported arrack, just lemon, sugar, a bottle of gin and soda-water, which by the 1870s was cheaply available in siphons and stoppered bottles. The oleo-saccharum technique had largely dropped out of home practice by the mid-twentieth century and was recovered by cocktail revivalists only in the last twenty years.