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Punch, Francaise, Hot
Heat in a saucepan on range a pint Jamaica rum, twelve ounces granulated sugar, and stir continually with wooden spoon until reduced to half the quantity. Add the strained juice of three sound lemons and four sweet oranges, set pan on corner of range and keep hot. Have in a well-scalded teapot an ounce green tea, pour over it a pint boiling water and let infuse for ten minutes, then strain into the rum, etc. Shift pan to a brisker part of range and when coming to a boiling point thoroughly skim, remove from fire, pour into a punch bowl and serve.
A hot rum punch built on a reduced rum syrup rather than a simple mix of spirit and water. Two things decide whether it works: how far you reduce the rum, and how you handle the tea.
- The hinge: reducing the rumA pint of rum with 12 oz sugar boiled down by half becomes a thick, dark syrup, and some of the alcohol will go off with the steam, though how much is hard to say in a syrup that thick. The likely result is a punch that is aromatic and sweet rather than strong. Use a wide pan so it reduces evenly and stir until the sugar is fully dissolved before it gets hot enough to catch on the bottom.
- Alcohol vapourBoiling neat spirit releases flammable vapour. Keep the pan away from a gas flame that can lick up the sides, do not lean over it, and have a lid to hand. An electric or induction hob lowers the risk, but a hot coil can still ignite vapour.
- "On range"The original assumes a wood or coal range with hot and cool zones. "Corner of range" means the coolest spot, where the pan stays hot without simmering; no temperature is given in the original. "A brisker part" means move it back to full heat.
- The tea is far too strong by modern tasteAn ounce of green tea is roughly 28 g to a pint of water, and a ten-minute steep started with fully boiling water will make it harshly tannic. A modern cook would use 8-10 g, water at about 175F, and three minutes. The original quantity likely suits the coarser, heavily fired green teas then sold rather than anything on a shelf now.
- MeasuresA pint here is 16 fl oz; 12 oz granulated sugar is about 1 2/3 cups. "Sound" lemons simply means unblemished ones, a real concern before refrigerated shipping.
- Do not let the finished punch boil hardOnce the tea and citrus juice go in, bring it just to the point of simmering, skim the foam, and take it off. Sustained boiling drives off the remaining aroma and turns the citrus flat and bitter.
- YieldRoughly a quart to a quart and a quarter once the syrup, tea and juice are combined. Warm the bowl first or the drink will be lukewarm by the second serving.
Hot punch of this kind sat at the end of long nineteenth-century dinners and at winter gatherings, and the "française" label in a book like this signals the French restaurant kitchen's habit of naming every variation of a standard preparation. The base is thoroughly British-colonial rather than French: Jamaica rum, sugar, citrus and tea, the same family of ingredients that gave English punch its name — generally traced to Sanskrit and Hindi words for five, for the five components of the original drink, though the derivation is traditional rather than settled. What marks this version as professional rather than domestic is the reduction step. Instead of stirring spirit into hot sweetened water, the cook first boils rum and sugar to a syrup, concentrating the molasses character of the rum and producing something closer to a cordial. Green tea appears often in punch recipes of the period, and the instruction to scald the teapot and strain carefully reflects a kitchen where tea leaves left in the pot were a known fault.