Regent Punch
One pint of strong black tea(in which put the rind of four lemons cut very thin). Two pounds of sugar, juice of six lemons, juice of six oranges, one pint of French brandy, one pint of French brandy, one pint of rum, two quarts of champagne. Serve in a bowl, with plenty of ice.--Mrs. C. C. McP.
A large-format Regency punch scaled for a party, not a pitcher. Two things need settling before you begin: the doubled line of brandy, and the sheer volume of sugar.
- The duplicated line"One pint of French brandy" is printed twice. This is almost certainly a compositor's error rather than a call for a quart, but the original is genuinely ambiguous. One pint gives a punch already at roughly wine strength; two makes it considerably stronger.
- YieldAs written the bowl holds about a gallon of liquid before ice — near 16 cups, or 30 to 35 punch-cup servings. Halve or quarter it freely; the proportions scale cleanly.
- The sugarTwo pounds is about 4 1/2 cups. The recipe gives no method, but the sugar is most easily dissolved in the tea while it is still hot, before anything else goes in. Modern palates find this cloying; start with half and taste against the citrus juice, which is the counterweight.
- Lemon rindPare the zest in wide strips with no white pith and steep it in the hot tea for 20 to 30 minutes, then strip it out. Left in overnight it turns bitter. This oil-heavy infusion, not the juice, is what gives the punch its perfume.
- Order of workTea, sugar and rind first; cool completely; then juices and spirits. Champagne goes in at the last moment, poured down the side of the bowl, or you lose the whole point of using it.
- "French brandy"In 1878 this meant imported French brandy, usually cognac, as distinct from domestic apple or grape brandy. Any decent VS cognac or armagnac answers. Rum of the period was typically darker and more molasses-heavy than a modern light rum -- a Jamaican pot-still rum is closer than a light modern white.
- Ice"Plenty of ice" is best answered at this volume by a single large block, which chills without watering the bowl down; period bowls were iced with blocks or with pounded ice. Cubes melt fast enough at this volume to flatten the drink within the hour; freeze water in a loaf tin instead.
- StrengthA quart of spirits plus two quarts of champagne, sweetened heavily enough to hide it, lands somewhere around 12 to 15 percent alcohol. It drinks like fruit juice and does not behave like it.
Regent's Punch takes its name from George, Prince Regent, later George IV, and is generally traced to his kitchens in the 1810s, when the Brighton and Carlton House establishments were the fashionable measure of extravagance. Early English versions are elaborate to the point of absurdity aschino, pineapple, sometimes a dozen ingredients he list to what its own household could reasonably buy. The version here, contributed to Marion Cabell Tyree's Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878) by one of the many women whose initials fill that book, keeps the essentials: strong tea as the base, citrus for acid, brandy and rum for weight, champagne for lift. That a Virginia housekeeper of the 1870s still reached for a Regency court recipe, and could command imported cognac and two quarts of champagne to make it, says a good deal about which social rituals survived the war intact and in whose houses.