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ROYAL PUNCH (to be served hot)
Put a quarter of a pound of doubly-refined sugar in large lumps into a bowl, and with it two limes and a thin slice of fresh lemon. With a bruiser rub the sugar and the fruit well together, then mix thoroughly with two glassfuls of calf's foot jelly in a hot state. Take brandy, rum, arrack, and Curacoa in equal quantities, and stir them into the preparation. When thoroughly mixed, add a pint of boiling green tea, and serve hot. The quantity of spirit must be regulated by taste; half a pint of each will generally be found sufficient.
A Regency-style hot punch that survived into the late Victorian kitchen manuals, built on a spirit base of roughly two pints. It is potent, and the calf's foot jelly is the part that will stop most modern cooks.
- Doubly-refined sugarSugar sold in hard cones or large lumps; "doubly-refined" marks the finer, whiter grade above ordinary lump sugar. A quarter pound of sugar cubes is the closest equivalent; the lumps matter because you need an abrasive surface to work against the fruit.
- The bruiser and the citrusA bruiser is a muddler or pestle. Rubbing lump sugar against lime and lemon skin draws the peel oils into the sugar, the technique now called oleo-saccharum, and it is the single step that gives the punch its aroma. Do not shortcut it with juice.
- Calf's foot jellyA gelatine set made by long-boiling calves' feet, standard invalid cookery of the period and hard to buy today; period versions were usually clarified and flavoured with sugar, lemon and wine rather than neutral. How much "two glassfuls" means depends on the glass -- a period wineglassful is about 2 fl oz, a tumbler nearer half a pint. Its purpose is body and a faint richness on the tongue; a lightly sweetened gelatine set at about half strength stands in, or the punch can simply be made without it.
- ArrackHere almost certainly Batavia arrack, the Javanese sugarcane-and-red-rice spirit that was the backbone of eighteenth and nineteenth century punch. It is still imported and has no true substitute; a funky Jamaican rum is the nearest approach in character.
- CuracoaCuraçao, the bitter-orange liqueur. Modern dry curaçao at around 40% is closer to what the book means than the sweet blue bottling.
- Green tea, boilingA pint of boiling water poured over green tea will scald it and turn it bitter. Brew at about 175F and bring the finished infusion up hot, or accept the astringency the original clearly expected.
- Do not boil after the spirits go inThe punch is warmed and served, never simmered. Held near boiling it will lose alcohol and citrus aroma.
- Yield and strengthAt the suggested half pint of each spirit that is two pints of spirit in a total of something over three pints, so well over half the liquid is spirit. It is a bowl for a dozen or more people in small glasses, not a drink for four. The line about regulating quantity by taste is worth taking seriously.
Punch reached Britain through the East India trade, and the name is generally traced to the Hindi panch, five, for the traditional five elements of spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the 1870s the great age of the punch bowl was already receding, kept alive in club rooms and at Christmas rather than as everyday drinking, and recipes titled "royal" or "regent's" punch circulated widely without any fixed formula beyond an extravagance of spirits. Two markers of an older, grander recipe are here: Batavia arrack, long associated with punch-making, and calf's foot jelly, a labour-intensive kitchen staple. That a hot drink was thickened with meat jelly says a good deal about a period in which punch was still considered restorative as much as convivial.