Home › Old English Dishes › Old English Dishes: Grog

Old English Dishes: Grog

The punch-bowl or wassail-bowl, the goddard, caudle-cup and posset-pot, were all in use in England in olden days-punch, or "pauch," however, being a drink of Indian origin, the word meaning five, and so named from its five ingredients: arrack, tea, sugar, lemon-juice, and water. Grog is an English beverage of later introduction. Admiral Vernon, in 1745, having put an end to the use by the English navy of ale, substituted for it rum diluted with water. The admiral was dubbed by the sailors "Old Grog," because of an old cloak of grogram which he always wore in foul weather, and hence it came naturally about that the new potation of the high seas acquired its present name.