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PUNCH (a la Regence)
Take the thin rind of two lemons and two Seville oranges. Put them into a bowl, with a small piece of vanilla, four cloves, and an inch of stick cinnamon. Pour over them a hot syrup, made with a pound and a half of refined sugar boiled in a pint of water. Let these ingredients infuse for several hours. Mix with them the strained juice of twelve lemons, and rum and brandy according to taste. Strain the liquid through a fine napkin. Bottle immediately, and put it in ice until it is wanted.
A bottled punch cordial rather than a bowl to be served at once: the aromatics are infused into a heavy sugar syrup, the citrus juice and spirit go in cold, and the whole thing is chilled until wanted. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients need translating.
- Seville orangesThese are bitter marmalade oranges, in British shops only from late December into February. Out of season, use the zest of two regular oranges plus the zest of half a grapefruit, or a single lime, to restore some of the bitterness the recipe is after.
- The pint is ImperialCassell's pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. A pound and a half of sugar (680 g) dissolved in that gives a very heavy syrup, a little over 1:1 by weight, which helps the finished punch keep in the bottle.
- "Refined sugar"White sugar as against the moist brown sugars of the period, which would have tinted and flavoured the syrup. Ordinary white granulated will do.
- Zest only, no pith"Thin rind" is the instruction that matters. A vegetable peeler taking only the coloured layer keeps the punch clean; any white pith infusing for several hours in hot syrup turns it bitter in a way the citrus juice will not cover.
- Vanilla"A small piece" means a length of split vanilla pod, perhaps 2 cm. Extract is not a good substitute here, as it is alcohol-based and will not infuse in the same way; if you use it, add a few drops at the end with the spirits.
- Quantities of spiritThe original leaves this open. Roughly equal volumes of syrup and spirit, with rum predominating over brandy, is one workable balance, but taste as you go — the syrup is sweet enough to carry a good deal.
- Straining"A fine napkin" is a muslin or jelly bag. Fine-mesh sieve lined with a double layer of cheesecloth does the same job and catches the cloudy lemon solids that otherwise settle in the bottle.
- Yield and keepingExpect about 1.5 litres of concentrate before spirits, more once they go in. Refrigerated in a sealed bottle it keeps for weeks; serve in small glasses, or over ice, or lengthened with soda water.
Punch reached Britain from India in the seventeenth century, the name generally traced to a Hindi or Sanskrit word for five, for the five canonical elements of spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice. Books like this one give it in bottled, keepable form — a cordial to be drawn on rather than a bowl brewed for company. The "à la Régence" tag borrows the name of the French Regency of 1715-23; such French dressings on English recipes were a standard flourish in late Victorian cookery writing. The heavy sugar syrup and the pound-and-a-half-to-a-pint ratio are also practical: sugar at that concentration, with the alcohol, is what let the bottle sit in ice until wanted.