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Norfolk Punch
Take the rind of sixteen fresh lemons and sixteen Seville oranges, pared so thinly as to be quite free from white. Put them into an earthenware jar, pour over them two quarts of brandy, and let them infuse for forty-eight hours. Strain the brandy, mix with it a syrup made by boiling two pounds of loaf sugar with three quarts of water until quite clear. The syrup must have become cold before it is added to the brandy; add the strained and filtered juice of the oranges and lemons; mix thoroughly, put the liquor into a perfectly clean spirit-cask, or into a jar; let it remain for six weeks, when it may be bottled or not, as is most convenient. This punch will improve with keeping: some persons add a pint of new milk before putting it into the cask. Probable cost, 3s. 6d., exclusive of the brandy. Sufficient for a gallon and a half of punch.
A large-format infused punch that keeps like a liqueur. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions are eighteenth-century and the citrus is not what sits in a supermarket today.
- Pare with no white at allThis is the hinge of the recipe. Any pith carried into the brandy during the forty-eight-hour infusion puts bitterness into the finished punch, and no amount of sugar covers it. A swivel peeler held almost flat, or a sharp paring knife, gives strips that are all oil-bearing zest.
- Seville orangesBitter Sevilles are a seasonal fruit, sold in Britain for a few weeks in January and February and rarely elsewhere. Their juice is sharp and low in sugar, closer to lemon than to a navel orange. If you cannot get them, the usual substitution is roughly two parts sweet orange juice to one part lemon or lime juice, but the finished punch will be softer and less aromatic than intended.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a hard cone or block, broken up as needed. Ordinary white granulated sugar is the direct equivalent, weight for weight.
- Quarts and the finished strengthIf you are working from a British copy of Cassell's, these are imperial quarts of 40 fl oz, so two quarts of brandy is about 2.4 US quarts, roughly 2.3 litres. Two quarts of brandy stretched into a gallon and a half of punch works out somewhere around 13 to 15 per cent alcohol, depending on the strength of the spirit -- enough to keep it, but a good deal weaker than the brandy you started with.
- Infusion timeForty-eight hours is ample for zest in brandy at room temperature; the oils come out fast. Longer steeping is generally held to add little, and can begin to pull coarser, less fresh notes from the peel.
- Cold syrup, and whyHot syrup poured onto spirit will carry off some of the volatile citrus oils you have just spent two days extracting, and some alcohol with them. Boil the sugar and water until clear, then let it come fully to room temperature before combining.
- Filtering the juiceSixteen lemons and sixteen Sevilles yield perhaps a litre of juice between them -- the stated gallon-and-a-half yield leaves room for little more -- and it will be cloudy with pulp. A double layer of muslin or a coffee filter answers to "strained and filtered" here, and it matters for a punch meant to sit six weeks and be poured clear.
- The pint of new milk"New milk" is fresh, unpasteurised whole milk straight from the cow. This is the old milk-punch trick: the acid curdles the milk, the curd traps solids and harshness, and the liquor is then racked or strained off bright. Use pasteurised whole milk, and strain the punch off the curd rather than leaving raw milk sitting in the cask for six weeks as written.
- Vessel and yieldA spirit cask is optional; a large glass demijohn or several sealed jars in a cool dark place do the same work. The recipe makes a gallon and a half, roughly 6.8 litres, which is fifty to seventy small punch glasses. Cassell's says it improves with keeping.
Norfolk punch belongs to a family of English keeping punches made in bulk in country houses through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, bottled or casked and drawn on for months. The name is generally traced to the county rather than to any single household, and older Norfolk punch recipes vary widely s some are brandy-and-citrus like this one, others build on cider or add spices and herbs. What holds the type together is the logic of preservation: sugar, acid and spirit in proportions that make the drink stable without a cellar full of ice. The optional pint of milk points to a related and older technique, clarified milk punch, whose surviving domestic recipes date from the early eighteenth century; curdling milk into an acidic spiked liquid and straining it off produces a drink that is both remarkably clear and remarkably long-lived. Cassell's gives a probable cost of three shillings and sixpence excluding the brandy, a reminder that the spirit was far and away the expensive part and that a punch of this size was a considered outlay, not a casual one.