Rum Punch
Make a rich, sweet lemonade, add rum and brandy to taste, only dashing with brandy. It must be sweet and strong.--Mrs. D. R.
Two lines of instruction and no measurements at all — this is a formula written for someone who had made punch before. The proportions are left to the maker, but the frame is clear enough to work from.
- "Rich, sweet lemonade"Here this most likely means a lemonade built on a heavy sugar syrup rather than a thin summer drink: a syrup of sugar and water (roughly equal parts works), then fresh lemon juice, then water to dilute. It wants to start oversweet and oversour, because the spirits will flatten both.
- The hingeBuild the lemonade first and taste it on its own before any spirit goes in. Once rum is added, sweetness and acidity are almost impossible to judge, and correcting a punch after the fact means adding volume you did not want.
- Rum to lemonadeOne part spirit to two or three parts lemonade is a reasonable place to begin, though historical punch proportions varied a great deal. Start at the weaker end; the instruction "it must be sweet and strong" describes the finished impression, not a licence to pour blind.
- "Only dashing with brandy"The brandy is an accent, not a second base spirit — a few tablespoons in a large bowl. It adds a grape-fruit depth behind the rum rather than making a rum-and-brandy blend.
- Which rumA dark, heavy West Indian or New England rum is the likely intention, closer to today's blackstrap or aged Jamaican styles than to a light white rum. A modern white rum will leave the punch tasting thin against all that sugar.
- Ice and dilutionThe recipe says nothing about ice, but where block ice was available it melted slowly and diluted gently. Cubes melt fast and will wash the drink out; freeze water in a loaf tin or bowl if you want that effect.
- YieldNo quantity is given. As a starting point, a bowl for eight to ten: 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water, juice of 6 to 8 lemons, water to make about 6 cups, then 2 to 3 cups dark rum and 2 to 3 tablespoons brandy.
Punch reached the English-speaking world through the East India trade in the seventeenth century, and the name is generally traced to a Hindi or Persian word for five, for the five elements of spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice. By the time Housekeeping in Old Virginia was compiled in 1879, punch was thoroughly domesticated in the American South: a bowl was the standard offering at weddings, holidays and open houses. Mrs. D. R. gives no proportions at all, noting only that rum carries the drink and brandy only perfumes it. The book is a collection of contributions from Virginia housewives, and alongside recipes with full measurements there are initialled, measureless entries like hers: recipes passed between women who could assume a shared kitchen vocabulary.