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Hot Swiss Punch
Place in a copper or tin vessel a half pound granulated sugar, gill Swiss kirsch, two ounces each St. Croix rum and good cognac, light with a match and let burn until sugar is dissolved, then pour over a pint champagne of about fifty degrees (Fahrenheit) temperature. Squeeze in juice of half a medium-sized, juicy orange and add six thin slices pineapple, mix whole well with a ladle, heat, but do not allow to boil, pour into a fancy bowl and serve.
RICKEY (WHISKEY OR GIN) Place in medium-sized fizz glass a square piece of ice, squeeze in juice of a good-sized sound lemon, a wine glass rye whiskey or gin and two dashes orange phosphate, fill with carbonated water or soda and serve.
A flamed spirit base finished with cold champagne — the sequence matters more than the quantities. Two drinks are run together in the original text; the Rickey at the end is a separate recipe that happens to share the page.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. So the burning base is 4 oz kirsch plus 2 oz rum and 2 oz cognac, against half a pound of sugar (about 1 generous cup).
- Wine glassIn the Rickey, this means roughly 2 fl oz of whiskey or gin, not the capacity of a modern stemmed glass.
- Copper or tin vesselSpecified because it conducts fast and takes direct flame without cracking. Any heavy, wide, flameproof pan works; avoid glass and anything with a plastic handle, and set it on the stovetop rather than a table.
- The hinge: do not boilAfter the champagne goes in, the punch is warmed only. Boiling drives off the alcohol the drink is built on and flattens the kirsch, and the pineapple turns stewed. Bring it to steaming — hand-hot, not simmering.
- Champagne at fifty degreesCellar-cool, not ice-cold. The recipe specifies the temperature but gives no reason for it; wine at 50F combines with the warm syrup more smoothly than wine straight from ice.
- Burning the sugarSugar will not ignite on its own — the alcohol vapour carries the flame, and the sugar dissolves in the warming spirit as it burns. Warm the pan slightly first so the vapour lights, and keep a lid at hand to smother the flame. Flaming burns off some of the alcohol but by no means all of it.
- Orange phosphateA soda-fountain flavouring syrup dosed with acid phosphate, standard behind a 1900s bar and now a specialist item. Two dashes of orange bitters gives a comparable lift to the Rickey; the phosphate's job was tartness as much as flavour.
- St. Croix rumA rum from St. Croix, then the Danish West Indies and now the US Virgin Islands; drier and lighter than Jamaican pot still. Any decent aged rum stands in.
- YieldA pint of champagne plus the spirit, sugar and juice makes something approaching a quart of finished punch — roughly four to six small cups. It does not hold well; serve it as soon as it is hot.
Flaming a sugar-and-spirit base and then extending it with wine is an old northern European practice — the German Feuerzangenbowle and the Scandinavian burnt-brandy punches work on the same principle. Kirsch, distilled from whole cherries in the Swiss and Alsatian orchards, is what earns the drink its name: it is the loudest thing in the glass and the reason the punch reads as Swiss rather than as a generic champagne cup. The pineapple and the specified fifty-degree champagne suggest a professional bar recipe rather than a domestic one, since a serving temperature assumes ice and someone watching the pan.