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Iced Punch
Get three medium-sized lemons, or two large ones, with good rough rinds, and eight ounces of sugar in lumps. Rub off the outer lemon-rind on the sugar, also the rind of two China oranges. Dissolve the sugar by pouring the juice of the fruit (which should be squeezed dry) over it, and then pressing and stirring it until thoroughly mixed, as much depends on the careful incorporation of the juices with the sugar; add water (boiling) until the sherbet, for so it is called, is of the desired flavour, and when cool enough, pour in brandy and rum--a pint of each will be sufficient. This will make four quarts of excellent punch. The Italians beat the whites of eggs to froth, and add it to the sherbet; it is then iced, and served in glasses. The sherbet is much richer if the lemon-pulp be beaten in with the sugar, but it should be strained before the spirits are added to it.
A Victorian punch built on the old oleo-saccharum method: sugar rubbed against citrus peel to draw out the oils before any liquid touches it. That step is the whole recipe, and everything else is proportion.
- Rub the rinds first, and mean itRubbing lump sugar over the zest until the lumps are damp and orange-tinged extracts the peel oils, which carry most of the aroma. Rough-skinned, unwaxed fruit works best; if you only have waxed supermarket citrus, scrub it in hot water first.
- China orangesAn old English name for the ordinary sweet orange, as distinct from the bitter Seville. Any eating orange serves.
- Eight ounces of sugar in lumpsAbout 225 g, or roughly a cup and a bit of granulated by volume — but buy actual sugar cubes for the rubbing stage. Loose sugar can be substituted only after the oils are extracted.
- The water is deliberately unmeasuredYou are told to add boiling water "until the sherbet is of the desired flavour." Working back from the stated yield of four quarts and a quart of spirits, that leaves a little under three quarts once the fruit juice is counted — which makes a distinctly lean, tart punch at only 8 oz of sugar. Add the water in stages and taste; many modern palates will want more sugar or less water.
- StrengthA pint each of brandy and rum in four quarts of finished punch works out near 10% alcohol by volume, about the strength of wine. It drinks easily and does not taste it. Four quarts is roughly 3.8 litres, or twenty generous glasses.
- "Sherbet" hereNot a frozen dessert and not the fizzy powder. In this period sherbet meant the sweetened citrus base itself, from the Arabic sharbat — the punch before the spirits go in. It keeps a couple of days covered in the fridge.
- The egg-white versionBeaten whites folded into the sherbet give the Italian style its foam. This is raw egg in an uncooked drink; the alcohol and acid do not sterilise it. Use pasteurised whites if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised, and hold the finished punch cold.
- Strain before the spiritsIf you beat in the lemon pulp for richness, pass the sherbet through a fine sieve first. Pith and membrane left in will turn the punch bitter as it stands, and the spirits accelerate the extraction.
- Icing itChill the sherbet thoroughly before adding the brandy and rum, then serve over a single large block of ice rather than cubes. A big block dilutes slowly, which matters in a punch already carrying three parts water.
Punch reached England from the East India trade in the seventeenth century, and the name is generally traced to the Hindi and Persian panch, five, for the classic tally of spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice — though the etymology has been argued over for as long as the drink has been drunk. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the 1870s, punch had settled into the domestic repertoire as a party drink made in quantity, and rubbing sugar on the peel appears in other punch recipes of the period. The method largely fell out of use in the twentieth century and was taken up again by cocktail writers and historians from the 2000s, so a reader following these lines today is close to current bar practice. The Italian egg-white variation reflects a wider nineteenth-century taste for frothed and clouded drinks, kin to the flips and syllabubs that appear elsewhere in books of this kind.