Punch, to make Hot
1/2 pint of rum, 1/2 pint of brandy, INGREDIENTS.- pint of rum, & pint of brandy, 1/4 lb. of sugar, 1 large lemon, 1/2 teaspoonful of nutmeg, 1 pint of boiling water.
Rub the sugar over the lemon until it has absorbed all the yellow part of the skin, then put the sugar into a punchbowl; add the lemon-juice (free from pips), and mix these two ingredients well together. Pour over them the boiling water, stir well together, add the rum, brandy, and nutmeg; mix thoroughly, and the punch will be ready to serve. It is very important in making good punch that all the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated; and to insure success, the processes of mixing must be diligently Put the sugar and lemon-rind into al attended to.
PUNCH-BOWL AND LADLE. "Quickly prepare the feast," quoth he, "And let there be salad and quail." -ANON.
QUAILS, TO DRESS.
UAILS, TO Dress. -INGREDIENTS.
Quails, butter, toast. AVERAGE COST, 1s. to 2s. each.
These birds keep good several days, and should be roasted without // drawing.
Truss them in the same manner as woodcock; roast them before a clear fire, keep them well basted, and serve on toast.
TIME. About 20 minutes.
SEASONABLE from October to December.
THE QUAIL.
A classic rum-and-brandy punch built on the old principle of extracting the lemon oil into the sugar before any liquid touches it. The method matters more than the proportions.
- The hinge: sugar on the lemonRubbing the loaf sugar over the whole lemon draws the oil out of the zest into the sugar — what bartenders now call an oleo-saccharum. Modern granulated sugar will not do this well; use a rough-cut lump sugar, or pare the zest thinly and muddle it into the sugar and let it stand half an hour.
- The spirit quantitiesThe printed measures for the rum and brandy are not legible as a usable figure. A punch of this style is conventionally built on about half a pint each of rum and brandy to a pint of boiling water, which yields a strong but drinkable bowl; adjust to taste rather than trusting the number as it stands.
- Sugar weightA quarter pound of sugar is about 115 g, a little over half a cup granulated. With a single lemon this gives a distinctly sweet punch by current taste; reduce it if you prefer.
- RumVictorian punch rum meant dark, heavy Jamaica rum, pungent and full of ester. A light white rum will taste thin here; use a dark pot-still rum.
- Keep it off the boilThe boiling water goes onto the sugar and lemon juice, not onto the spirits. Add the rum and brandy afterwards and do not reheat the bowl — sustained heat drives off both the alcohol and the aromatics you just worked to extract.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the surface at the end. Pre-ground nutmeg has lost most of what it is there for.
- YieldRoughly two pints of finished punch, or six to eight small glasses. Serve in warmed glasses or cups; a cold glass kills a hot punch within a minute.
Punch reached Britain through the East India trade in the seventeenth century, and the name is generally traced to a Hindi or Sanskrit word for five, after the five canonical elements — spirit, sugar, lemon, water and spice — all five of which are present here. By Mrs Beeton's day the punch bowl and its long-handled ladle were fixtures of winter hospitality. The insistence that the ingredients be "thoroughly incorporated" answers a genuine practical difficulty: undissolved sugar settles unless it is worked in, and a badly stirred bowl will not serve evenly from first glass to last.