Punch, Cold
INGREDIENTS for bowl for 12 persons.-1 bottle of rum, 2 glasses of curaçoa, 1 bottle of champagne, 1/4 lb. of pounded sugar, 1 large lemon, 1/2 pint of water, ice. AVERAGE COST, 8s.
Punch, Cold. (Another way of Making.) - INGREDIENTS for bowl for 12 persons. -1 bottle of Scotch whiskey, 1 bottle of hock or other light wine, 5 oz. of loaf sugar, 2 lemons, 1/2 pint of water, 1 wineglass of liqueur. AVERAGE COST, 6s.
Cut the lemon-rind thin into the bowl, and pour over that and the sugar the water boiling. When quite cold and the sugar dissolved, take out the peel, squeeze eeze the lemons and add the juice, strained; then the whiskey and liqueur, and lastly, the wine. Serve with a pail of ice, broken up.
SEASONABLE in summer.
Two versions of the same bowl, with the method printed only after the second set of ingredients — it applies to both. Read it first, because the sugar syrup has to be made and cooled before anything alcoholic goes in.
- The hinge: build the syrup firstSteep the thin lemon peel and sugar in the boiling water, as the recipe directs, and let it go completely cold before the spirit and wine arrive. Adding alcohol to a hot syrup drives off the spirit, and warm punch tastes flat and syrupy.
- Bottle sizesA Victorian spirit or wine bottle is close enough to today's 75 cl. The first bowl is therefore roughly a full bottle of rum plus a full bottle of champagne for twelve — a strong drink by modern standards, and worth serving in small cups.
- Glasses and wineglassesA 'wineglass' in Victorian receipts is reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz, which is the likely sense of the 'wineglass of liqueur' in the second version. The '2 glasses of curaçoa' in the first is unspecified; a small liqueur glass of an ounce or so is the usual reading, but the book does not say. Neither is a tumbler.
- Loaf and pounded sugarLoaf sugar was broken from a hard refined cone; pounded sugar is the same thing crushed fine. Granulated works for the hot infusion, caster if you want it to dissolve faster. Five ounces is about 3/4 cup.
- Curaçoa and hockCuraçoa is orange curaçao; a dry triple sec is the closest current equivalent. Hock is Rhine white wine, the name generally traced to Hochheim; a dry or off-dry German Riesling stands in for it, while the recipe's 'other light wine' leaves the choice open to any light white.
- Ice goes beside the bowl, not in itThe "pail of ice, broken up" is passed separately so guests ice their own cup. Ice tipped into the bowl waters the whole thing down within the half hour.
- Add the wine last, and lateWith the champagne version especially, pour the sparkling wine in only as the bowl goes out. Everything else can be mixed and chilled hours ahead.
- YieldTwelve servings as written, each around 5-6 fl oz of undiluted punch. Half quantities suit six comfortably; the syrup base scales without trouble.
Punch reached Britain through East India Company traffic in the seventeenth century, and the name is generally traced to the Hindi and Sanskrit word for five, for the five components — spirit, sugar, lemon or lime, water and spice — though the etymology is traditional rather than settled. These are cold summer punches, built on the same skeleton but with the water reduced to a syrup vehicle and a second alcohol, champagne or hock, standing in for the spice; hot punches continued to be made and printed alongside them. The average costs are telling: 8s. and 6s. a bowl at a period when a housemaid might earn well under a pound a week.