Punch (14 page)

These days, for small gatherings I use a ten-inch (diameter) Chinese soup bowl that holds three quarts—so technically a threbble, although I’m using ice so less liquid is involved. It cost less than ten dollars in a Chinese-restaurant supply house (a set of matching three-ounce teacups cost a dollar each). For medium parties (say, fifteen to twenty people), I find a six-quart china mixing/serving bowl works well; if you can locate one, the “Great Bowl” in the china-maker Pfaltzgraff’s Aura line is just right. For large parties, I’ll either use a fourteen-quart glass bowl, bought new, or, for less formal occasions, deploy the highway-crew cooler (it’s insulated and holds five gallons; most efficient).

For hot Punch, a large earthenware pitcher or jug is traditional, although a fondue kit or—best of all—a Crock-Pot provides an effective modern update. About the largest size of jug available easily these days is three quarts, which is still enough for a pretty-good-sized hot Punch party. Le Creuset makes one; look for the “Sangria Jug.”

The rest of a good modern Punch kit is simple. The one expensive item is a serious juicer. Punch can be a great annoyance to make in quantity if you skimp in this department. There’s no finer or faster juicer made than the large, cast-aluminum Ra Chand J210, which you can get for a little over a hundred dollars. A lever-action, all-manual device, it’s light and fast, and with it you can make a quart of juice in less than ten minutes—as quick as any electric juicer, and it doesn’t chew up the pith (just don’t put it in the dishwasher, or it will corrode). Make Punch four times and it has paid for itself in saved labor. Most of the rest of the gear is self-explanatory: measuring cups, storage containers, a good swivel-bladed vegetable peeler and a large muddler for handling the citrus peels, a chinois for straining the juice, knives and cutting boards. If you’re making Punch to bottle and keep, you’ll also need a fine sieve or strainer. The cloth kind made for straining cooking oil so that it can be used for biodiesel works well and is easily available for cheap on the Internet, but you can also use a clean pillowcase or T-shirt. Oh, and don’t forget the nutmeg grater.

HOW TO MAKE PUNCH, OR THE FOUR PILLARS OF PUNCH

If Punch-makers were short on theoretical analysis, they were long indeed on practical tips—particularly toward the end of the Punch Age, when one begins to see magazine articles with titles like “The Poetry of Punch” and whole chapters of books devoted to the topic, such as the extensive one Charles Tovey included in his 1878
Wit, Wisdom, and Morals Distilled from Bacchus
. By then, of course, the drink had become elaborate enough for the occasional practitioner to require such aids, and most practitioners had become occasional. Many of these tips involved specific modifications of the basic five-ingredient formula; if useful, they will be dealt with in the appropriate chapters of Book III. But there were some definite refinements to the basic technique that kept coming up again and again, albeit not always with perfect agreement. These cover four main areas of Punch-making: the handling of the citrus oil, the handling of the citrus juice, the order of assembly and the proportions of the ingredients.

You will note that none of them has anything to do with garnishing. In 1817, the opinionated Dr. Kitchiner observed in his
Apicius Redivivus
that “a few parings of the orange or lemon rind are generally considered as having an agreeable appearance floating in the bowl” (and indeed a curl of peel is visible peeking over the edge of the whopping bowl on the cover of this volume). Beyond that (and even that was controversial), classic Punches were essentially unadorned, the frippery and fanciness with which Punch is so often presented being a development of its years of obsolescence, when it was forced to rely on cosmetics and flashy clothing to seduce wary drinkers, rather than the healthy, native charms of youth. If you require such a presentation, your imagination can no doubt be your guide.

 

 

PILLAR I: THE OLEO-SACCHARUM. As Jerry Thomas wrote, “to make punch of any sort in perfection, the ambrosial essence of the lemon must be extracted.” By “ambrosial essence,” he meant not the juice but the oil contained in the fruit’s skin. In this, he was entirely correct: the lemon oil adds a fragrance and depth that marks the difference between a good Punch and a great one (the same applies to Punch made with oranges, in particular Seville ones; if you’re making Lime Punch, however, you’re off the hook—lime peel is unacceptably bitter and its oil never used in classic recipes). By far the best and easiest way to incorporate this oil in Punch is to extract it with sugar, it having long been recognized that, as the
Dispensatory of the United States of America
put it in 1858, “Sugar renders . . . fixed and volatile oils to a certain extent miscible with water and forms with the latter [a] . . . combination called in pharmacy
oleo-saccharum
.” I don’t know when this oleo-saccharum (dog Latin for “oil-sugar”) first began to be incorporated in Punch recipes, but it seems to have been on the table, so to speak, by 1670, when it appears in a very Punch-like recipe by Hannah Wooley. It was most certainly in play by 1707, when our old friend Ned Ward writes of a “Ladies
Punch-Club
, near St.
James
’s,” and the member of it who shares secret nips of Punch with her chambermaid, thus rendering Mrs. Betty “fragrant of
Lemmon-Zest
, and
Nutmeg
”—a thing I must confess to finding strangely erotic.

The old-school way of preparing the oleo-saccharum, which Thomas endorses, is “by rubbing lumps of sugar on the rind, which breaks the delicate little vessels that contain the essence, and at the same time absorbs it.” But as the anonymous and astute author of the 1869
Steward & Barkeeper’s Manual
observes, “this process is laborious, and seldom followed by the best punch mixers, save when a goodly number are to be supplied.” Whether or not to use it is moot, however, as modern sugar is too weak. I don’t mean in sweetness but rather in cohesion and abrasiveness. Nineteenth-century commentators talk of this process stripping lemons of their yellow outer skin entirely, but I’ve tried it with every kind of modern sugarloaf, cube and crystal I could procure and only ended up with a mass of crumbled, faintly scented sugar and a lemon undimmed in its yellowness. In this, our ancestors had the advantage on us.

If the traditional way doesn’t work, then what? By far the most effective method I’ve found is to peel the fruit with a sharp, swivel-bladed vegetable peeler, trying to get as little of the white pith as possible. With a little practice, you should be able to turn out broad spirals of impressive length (which will make it easier when it comes time to remove them). These are then muddled firmly in a sturdy bowl along with two ounces of sugar per peel and then left to sit in a warm place for at least half an hour, and preferably twice that. During that period, if the peels are at all fresh, the sugar will draw forth an impressive amount of additional oil. After the peels are muddled again to incorporate the oil, they are ready for use.

This process is admittedly time-consuming and to some degree a laborious one. In the nineteenth century, there were those, such as the adventurous Dr. Strauss (there was seemingly not a revolution in the middle of the century that Gustave Louis Maurice Strauss didn’t have a hand in, until age and impecuniousness forced him into Bohemia, writing and then, worst of all, culinary writing), who suggested substituting commercial essence of lemon for the peel, on the dubious grounds that it is “more uniform.” Do not even attempt this. Others suggested that the best way to incorporate the oleo-saccharum is to put the peels in the spirits and let them infuse for a couple of hours. While this isn’t ineffective, I find it produces a less vibrant lemoniness than the above method, and it takes even longer, although it is admittedly easier.

 

 

PILLAR II: THE SHRUB. The term of art for the mixture of sugar and citrus juice upon which Punch is constructed is variously given as “sherbet” or “shrub.” In either case, it indicates the stage where the oleo-saccharum and the juice have been incorporated, sometimes with a little water as well, if that’s needed to dissolve the sugar. “Shrub” is also used to refer to the same thing, but with some or all of the spirits added. Both nonalcoholic and alcoholic shrubs can be bottled and will keep, although their flavor will change with aging. The nonalcoholic kind is, however, more perishable and must be kept refrigerated. The boozy shrub can be kept in a cool, dark place. Either will have to be filtered after a couple of days to remove precipitates.

As an ancillary measure to employing the oleo-saccharum, there are those who suggest an additional means of adding lemon flavor to Punch. This time it’s the pulp and pips we’re dealing with. The more finicky of the authorities of yore, recognizing that even such Punch draff has a contribution that it could make, emphasize that it should not be discarded without having its flavor extracted. For some, this is accomplished simply by waiting to strain the juice until after it has been mixed with the oleo-saccharum. The real adepts, however, favor running a little boiling water over the strained solids, in order to leach out the flavor from the unbroken juice cells and dissolve and incorporate the jellylike coating of the pips, which is reputed to be rich in lemoniness. I have not found this to be essential, but neither have I found it to be in any way detrimental to the final flavor of the Punch.

 

 

PILLAR III: THE ORDER. Then there’s the whole vexed and dogmatized question of when to put in what, which is tied in with the issue of temperature. William Maginn, one of the reigning literary wits of the Regency years, stated the general principles most concisely in one of his popular “Maxims of ODoherty [
sic
],” many of which are devoted to Punch and its manufacture: “In making hot toddy, or hot punch, you must put in the spirits before the water: in cold punch, grog, &c., the other way.” The rationale behind this distinction, which Maginn declines to provide, appears to be twofold. One, sugar dissolves poorly in spirits unless they’re hot. For cold Punch, therefore, it’s best to dissolve the sugar in the water before adding the booze. Two, hot Punch should be as hot as possible. If you add the water first, it will cool as you stir it to dissolve the sugar. Therefore, since dissolution is much less of a problem in hot liquids, it can go in last. This sounds fairly logical, and yet there were those who disagreed, and bitterly. Dr. Strauss, at least, was civil about it when he suggested that the best procedure with the water was a two-part one: put some in (hot or cold, depending on how the Punch will be served) with the sugar and lemon juice, to dissolve it. Then add the spirits. Then add the remaining water. Revolutionary or not, he was a sensible man.

 

 

PILLAR IV: THE PROPORTIONS. Finally, the proportions. Are they “Two of sour, and one of sweet, / One of strong, and two of weak”? Thus, at least, a reviewer in the
Monthly Review
claimed “our grandmothers used to say.” That was in 1756 (and it only makes sense if the size of a single part differs from line to line). Or is it the Caribbean “One of sour, two of sweet, / Three of strong, four of weak” (as the author of the 1844 novel
Edith Leslie
insisted)? Or was that “Four of strong and eight of weak” (as that formula was quickly amended)? Or “Two of strong and one of weak, / One of sour and one of sweet” (1851)? “One of sour and three of sweet / Four of strong and four of weak” (1908)? Or—or, as Thomas wrote with an uncharacteristic note of uncertainty, “the precise portions of spirit and water, or even of the acidity and sweetness, can have no general rule, as scarcely two persons make punch alike.”
^ak
Beyond that, lemons and limes vary in acidity, sugar varies in sweetness by kind and spirits vary in proof. Many classic Punch recipes decline to specify quantities at all for the citrus, sugar and water. In part, this has to do with the fact that, as one of Thomas’s recipes notes, “the acidity of a lemon cannot be known till tried, and therefore [the amount of sugar] must be determined by the taste.” But it’s more than that. Punch-making is an art, and arts cannot be legislated.

That said, it would be poltroonish to hide behind the shield of art. This is my book about Punch, and I cannot duck so vital a question. For the record, then, my favorite proportions are these: One of sour, one of sweet, / Four of strong and six of weak. They are my own, and they are, simply and without possibility of argument, the best. You may change them, but remember the words of Dr. Walsh, who upon listening to his friends’ suggestions as he was brewing the evening’s Punch replied, “I’ll tell you what, gentlemen. The Punch may not be quite so good as you could wish, but by God if you
mend
it at all, you’ll entirely
spoil
it.”

Whatever proportions you use, though, remember that you’ll have to put more sugar in than you would in a Cocktail, because the sugar has to not only balance out the sourness of the citrus juice but add texture to all that water as well. And if you’re using tea, you’ll need a lot more: tea soaks up sugar like a ShamWow does off-brand cola.

Using a swivel-bladed vegetable peeler, peel three lemons, avoiding as much as possible cutting into the white pith. Reserve the lemons and put the peels into a large, nonreactive bowl.

Add 6 ounces of sugar. Using a muddler, mash the peels into the sugar until it is wet with the lemon oil. Let sit for at least thirty minutes, and preferably an hour.