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Champagne Punch
1 cup water 2 tablespoons Orange Curacoa 2 cups sugar Juice 2 lemons 1 quart California champagne 2 cups tea infusion 4 tablespoons brandy Ice 2 tablespoons Medford rum 1 quart soda water Make a syrup by boiling water and sugar ten minutes. Mix champagne, brandy, rum, Curacoa, lemon juice, and tea infusion. Sweeten to taste with syrup and pour into punch-bowl over a large piece of ice. Just before serving add soda water.
A late-Victorian party punch built on the standard formula: a boiled sugar syrup, a spirit base, citrus, and a fizzy top-up added at the last moment. The ingredient quantities are given in two columns that have run together, so read them as pairs before you shop.
- The syrupOne cup water to two cups sugar boiled ten minutes gives roughly a cup and a half of heavy syrup — more than the punch needs. You are told to sweeten to taste, so expect to have some left over; it keeps for weeks refrigerated.
- Tea infusionTwo cups of brewed tea, presumably black, cooled; the recipe does not specify strength, so make it on the strong side. Tea appears often in nineteenth-century punch, contributing tannin and body as well as flavour, and keeps the drink from tasting merely sweet. Cool it completely or it will melt the ice on contact.
- Medford rumA dark New England rum associated with Medford, Massachusetts; commercial production had ended by the early twentieth century, and Prohibition finished off what remained. Any full-flavoured dark rum stands in; a Jamaican or Demerara style is closest to the heavy molasses character intended.
- Orange CuracoaOrange curaçao, a sweetened orange-peel liqueur. Modern triple sec is usually drier and often stronger; if you use it, cut the syrup accordingly.
- California champagnePeriod American labelling for domestic sparkling wine. A dry sparkling wine — cava, crémant, or a brut sparkling from anywhere — is what the recipe wants. Nothing sweet, given the syrup already in the bowl.
- A large piece of iceNot cubes. A single block, frozen in a loaf pan or bowl, has far less surface area and dilutes the punch slowly over an evening. Cubes will water it down much faster.
- Order of operationsEverything but the soda water can be mixed and chilled hours ahead. Add the soda at the table; once it is in, the punch has perhaps half an hour of life.
- YieldAbout three quarts once the soda is in — roughly twenty-four punch-cup servings of four ounces. It is stronger than it tastes: a quart of sparkling wine plus half a cup of spirits and liqueur.
Punch in this style descends from the older English formula traditionally described as five parts — spirit, citrus, sugar, water and spice — and by the late nineteenth century versions like this one had shifted to sparkling wine, with the older spirits reduced to seasoning in tablespoon doses. The call for "California champagne" reflects a period when domestic sparkling wine freely borrowed the name of the French region, a practice that persisted on American labels well into the twentieth century. Medford rum, named for the Massachusetts town whose distilleries worked the West Indies molasses trade, was still a familiar reference point when this was written, which is why the ingredient reads as a place name rather than a brand; commercial production had ceased by the early twentieth century.