Tea Punch
Three cups of strong green tea (in which put the rind of six lemons, pared very thin), one and one-half pound of sugar, juice of six lemons. Stir together a few minutes, then strain, and lastly add one quart of good rum. Fill the glasses with crushed ice when used. It will keep any length of time bottled. Fine for hot weather.--Mrs. A. B.
A concentrated punch syrup cut with rum and served over ice — essentially a bottled cocktail base. The technique of steeping lemon peel in hot tea is the hinge; it pulls the citrus oil out of the rind and is what makes the drink taste of lemon rather than merely sour.
- Pare the rind thinOnly the yellow zest carries the oil. Any white pith taken with it will turn the finished punch bitter over the weeks it sits in the bottle.
- Strong green teaBrew the tea strong, but green tea turns harshly astringent if steeped in boiling water for long; water just off the boil and a few minutes is enough, and the sugar will balance what tannin there is.
- The sugarOne and a half pounds is about 3 1/3 cups of granulated sugar dissolved into three cups of tea — a heavy syrup, roughly equal parts sugar and liquid by weight. Stir until no grit remains at the bottom before straining, and do it while the tea is hot.
- Six lemonsSix modern lemons give roughly a cup of juice; if yours are large, taste the sweetened tea before adding the rum and hold back a little juice if it is aggressively sour.
- Yield and strengthThe finished punch comes to something over two quarts and runs somewhere in the region of 15 to 20 percent alcohol before ice — closer to wine strength than cocktail strength. It is served neat over crushed ice, so pour in small glasses.
- "Keep any length of time bottled"The sugar and spirit make this shelf-stable in a sealed bottle, but the fresh lemon juice will dull after a few weeks and the tea will darken. Refrigerated it holds its brightness for a couple of months.
- Rum'Good rum' here is unlikely to have meant a light filtered white; a dark, full-flavored rum suits the drink better.
Tea punch belongs to the older English punch tradition — spirit, citrus, sugar, water and spice — in which tea simply replaces the plain water and contributes tannin and aroma. Recipes of this shape circulated widely in Anglo-American cookbooks through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the batched, bottled version suited Southern summer entertaining before reliable refrigeration: the base could be made once and kept, needing only ice at the moment of serving. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, drew on contributions from some two hundred and fifty ladies of Virginia and her sister states, and the initials "Mrs. A. B." are typical of how the book credited its sources. Commercial ice was increasingly available to well-off Southern households by the 1870s.