Punch, Whiskey

A cross-reference rather than a standalone recipe: Cassell's expects you to have the hot punch entry open beside it. The whole substitution rests on one word, sherbet, which does not mean frozen dessert here.

• "Sherbet" means the base, not an iceIn Victorian punch-making the sherbet is the unspirited foundation: sugar, lemon rind and juice, boiling water, and often a little spice, steeped and strained. From Arabic sharbat, a sweet drink. Nothing is frozen at any stage in a hot punch.
• Working proportionsCassell's gives no figures on this page, and the hot punch recipes it cross-refers to are not reproduced here, so any ratio is inference rather than instruction. Hot punch bases of the period generally combine pared lemon rind and juice, sugar and boiling water, with spirit added in some smaller proportion; work from the base recipe itself and adjust to taste.
• The one instruction that mattersAdding the spirit -- The recipe says nothing about when to add the whiskey, but the usual practice is to add it off the heat, once the sherbet has stopped boiling. Alcohol carries much of the aroma, and prolonged simmering drives it off.
• Rub the sugar on the rindIf the base recipe tells you to rub lump sugar over the lemons or to steep the pared rind, do it. The oil in the zest, not the juice, is what makes punch smell like punch.
• Which whiskeyIn a British book of this period this means Scotch or Irish, and Irish whiskey was strongly associated with punch. Bourbon or rye works but pushes the drink sweeter, so cut the sugar.
• ServingServe hot in a warmed, handled glass or a small tumbler with a spoon in it to spread the shock and stop the glass cracking. Yield depends on whichever base recipe you follow; the page gives no quantities.