No. 3715

Claudius Punch and Wine Punch—Hot

Punch Claudius et Punch au vin Chaud

To one pound of Scotch oatmeal mix four quarts of boiling water; whip it in, stirring vigorously; then boil the preparation, working it steadily; add one and a half pounds of seeded Malaga raisins, the peel and juice of four lemons, a pint of good sherry wine and sufficient sugar to sweeten, a little grated nutmeg, ground cloves and cinnamon; also add a quarter of a pound of finely shredded citron, and should it be too thick then put in more boiling water, strain through a fine sieve, let cool and serve.

Wine Punch--Hot.—Put into a jar two bottles of Bordeaux wine, the juice of six oranges and the peel of three, a small stick of cinnamon, and three cloves; let the whole infuse for twelve hours, then pass through a sieve. Put the liquid in an untinned copper saucepan with six ounces of sugar; heat until it nearly reaches the boiling point and serve in punch glasses.

← No. 3714 Champagne, Claret and Rum Punch; Dessert Dri The Wine Cellar, Punches & Drinks

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two unrelated drinks share the entry: an oatmeal-thickened punch in the Scottish and Northern English tradition, and a hot spiced claret. The first is closer to a drinkable gruel than to a cocktail.

Ignore the untinned copperThe second recipe calls for an untinned copper saucepan. Hot acidic wine can strip copper from bare metal and carry it into the drink; use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron.
Scotch oatmealThis means pinhead or steel-cut oats, not rolled oats or instant. Rolled oats will collapse into paste and give a slack, gluey punch.
Whip it inThe hinge of the first recipe. Rain the oatmeal into rapidly boiling water while whisking hard, or it seizes into lumps that no sieve will fix. Then keep it moving over the heat, since oatmeal catches and scorches on the bottom within a minute of being left alone.
StrainingFour quarts of water to a pound of oats gives a thin porridge, and pushing that through a fine sieve is slow work. A chinois and a ladle, or a coarse strainer followed by a fine one, is the practical route. Expect to discard most of the raisin and citron solids.
Malaga raisins and citronMalaga raisins were large seeded muscatels; ordinary muscat raisins are the nearest thing and need no seeding. Citron here is the candied peel of the citron fruit, sold in tubs at Christmas, not lemon peel.
Sugar and quantity"Sufficient to sweeten" is left to the cook. Start with about half a cup for the full batch and taste after the spices have steeped. The oatmeal punch makes roughly a gallon, or twenty small servings; the hot wine punch makes about a dozen glasses.
Bordeaux and the temperatureA plain dry claret is what is wanted, not a bottle worth cellaring. "Nearly the boiling point" is best read as somewhere below a simmer, in the region of 170F. A full boil will drive off alcohol and coarsen the fruit.
The twelve-hour infusionDo the orange and spice steeping cold, covered, in the refrigerator rather than at room temperature. Heating comes only at the end, immediately before serving.

A Little History

Oatmeal punch belongs to a family of grain-thickened drinks that runs from medieval possets through Scottish brose and the caudles given to invalids and nursing mothers; the oats are there for body and sustenance as much as flavour, and versions of the same idea appear in nineteenth-century British household books under names like "oatmeal caudle" or "Athole brose" when whisky replaces the sherry. Ranhofer, who ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, was assembling a reference work rather than a personal repertoire, and the punch chapter sweeps up British, French and American formulas alike — hence a Scottish oat drink sitting beside a straightforwardly French vin chaud on the same page. The hot wine punch is the older and more widespread of the two: spiced, sweetened, gently heated red wine is documented across Europe from the late Middle Ages, and the long cold infusion with orange peel before heating is the detail that separates a careful version from mulled wine boiled up in a hurry.