Punch (2 page)

Although when I say “Englishmen,” I am doing a great injustice, as much if not most of the mixing of drinks that was done in England in the eighteenth century was not done by men at all. Bartending was a woman’s job. That’s not to say that no men ever performed it, but the standard setup was the man as proprietor, host, bouncer and business manager, while the ones who drew the drinks and served them were female—in fact, they were often the proprietor’s daughters, the prettier the better. As Thomas Brown observed in 1700, “Every Coffee-House is illuminated both without and within Doors; without by a fine Glass Lanthorn, and within by a Woman . . . light and splendid,” whose job was not only to serve the customer but to chaff him and flirt with him and draw him in. I suspect that the freedom the modern bartender possesses to banter with a customer, a thing not common in the service professions, was fought for and won by those Punch-slinging young barmaids of three hundred years ago.

Like all the best and most enduring culinary preparations, Punch was a simple formula that could grow in complexity with its executor’s skill and available resources. During the two centuries of its hegemony, British Punch-makers, generously endowed with both, used them to develop a good many of what we consider today to be the hallmarks of the American school of mixing drinks. The appreciation of which liquors and wines complement each other and which don’t; the ins and outs of balancing sweet and sour; the use of liqueurs and various flavored syrups for sweetening; the salutary effects of Champagne and sparkling water on drink and drinker; the affinities between certain citrus fruits and certain spirits (e.g., the orange and brandy, the lime and rum); the use of eggs, dairy products and gelatin as smoothing agents—the list is both long and technical, descending into the minutiae of proportion, technique and even garnish.

The chance to explore the British foundations of modern mixology and, even better, to delve into the rich and mostly unmined quarry of anecdote that stemmed from it is certainly motivation enough to write a book and, I hope, for people to read it. Yet there’s another, even better reason, but to explain it I’m going to have to stoop to autobiography.

Ten years ago, I fell into a job writing about Cocktails. It began as an amusing sideline, something to have a little fun with while I pursued a career as professor of English literature. But it turned out that mixing up Sazerac Cocktails and Green Swizzles, researching their histories and writing anecdotal little essays about them for
Esquire
magazine’s website was not only more fun than grading papers and trying to keep classes full of hormone-buzzed sophomores focused on the tribulations of King Lear but also—to me, anyway—considerably more satisfying. Perhaps I lacked academic seriousness. In any case, before very long the sideline metastasized into a career.

Being a professional Cocktail geek brought its own peculiar challenges. One of them was what to do at parties. Spending all this time in the company of delightful drinks, I wanted to share—friends don’t let friends drink Vodka Tonics, not when they could be absorbing iced dewdrops crafted from good gin or straight rye whiskey, fresh-squeezed juices, rare bitters and liqueurs and, of course, lots of love. But bartending is hard work, and after a couple of years’ worth of parties spent measuring, shaking, stirring, spilling, fumbling for ingredients, fielding requests for Vodka Tonics and, worst of all, never getting a chance to actually talk to anyone, I was willing to relinquish the spotlight and the performative glory of mixing drinks in front of people for a little hanging out and cocktail party chitchat. Perhaps it was time to take a second look at Punch. After all, the old bartender’s guides I’d been steadily accumulating had clutches of large-bore recipes tucked away at the back, and if these were anywhere near as tasty as the Cocktails I’d been successfully extracting from them . . .

My first attempts to fill the Punch bowl, however, were amateur at best. I treated the recipes as mere guidelines, changing things for convenience and cost and because surely I knew better than the mustachioed old gent whose work I was interpreting. Used to making Cocktails, where dilution is a no-no, I would cut back the seemingly excessive amounts of water the recipes called for. The result, of course, was chaos. I remember, dimly, one summer afternoon when I made the famous Philadelphia Fish-House Punch for the first time, leaving in the copious amounts of rum and brandy but omitting most of the water. Fortunately, it was at a house party out in the country, and nobody had to drive. Or even walk, for that matter. Even staying pantsed was somewhat of a challenge. Other times, I’d skimp on the ice, think nothing of using powdered nutmeg instead of grating it fresh, splash in Technicolor arrays of clashing liqueurs, substitute cheap bourbon for good cognac or ginger ale for Champagne and a host of other things too embarrassing to relate.

Eventually, though, I began to learn. I had help. Friends shared their expertise, their space, their liquor and, most importantly, themselves. It’s not Punch if there’s nobody to drink it. Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who had put in some sterling work at the Punch bowl, was happy to share the fruits of his experience (for the record, his Bimbo Punch is a thing of beauty). Sherwin Dunner, friend to every living hot jazz musician, hosted some memorable evenings, where the Punch flowed like ditchwater and the music reached an authentic speakeasy-era level of abandon. Nick Noyes and Jessica Monaco provided guinea pigs in their dozens and in their hundreds and the booze with which to water them—and, even better, an appreciation for precisely the sort of recherché, historic formula that appealed to me. There’s something stirring about gazing across a sweeping lawn full of people all mildly intoxicated on Captain Radcliffe’s Punch, a recipe that hadn’t seen the light of day since England was ruled by a Dutchman. I could go on, but I’ll save everyone else—as many as I can remember—for the acknowledgments.

It wasn’t just laziness that kept me making Punch, although Lord knows I can be plenty lazy. But if you’re spending the hour and a half before party time assembling a baroque concoction that was originally created for European royalty and calls for fifteen ingredients, half of them prepared from other ingredients, sloth doesn’t really enter into it. Nor was it the utter deliciousness of most of these old Punches. G&Ts are delicious, too, and they take a lot less work. But over the last seven or eight years, I’ve made historic Punches dozens and dozens of times, for groups as small as four and as large as 250; for friends coming over to chat, backyard barbecues, Christmas parties, book parties, weddings (a massive bowl of Punch makes a fine wedding present and produces happy wedding guests); for Victorian Societies and museums and clubs and too many lectures to count. Every time, it happens the same way.

First, while everyone else remembers those fraternal garbage cans and decides that they’ll stick to the wine, thanks anyway, the veterans, those who have shared a bowl of real Punch before, step smartly up to the sideboard and ladle themselves cups. Meanwhile, a few adventurous or unusually bibulous newcomers sniff around the bowl, examining the unpromising, brownish liquid within (frat and food-magazine Punches are always as brightly and cheerfully colored as drinks marketed for toddlers) and studying the vets for signs of liver disease or just plain bad character. Then one of these will give in and ladle herself a glass, taking a tentative sip as the others look on with concern. Okay, so it’s not poisonous. In fact—well, soon the knot by the bowl is making a joyful little noise, and the rest of the folks are beginning to reconsider their policy of cleaving to the Grüner Veltliner. One by one, what the heck, they drift over to see what the fuss is about, soon to be joined by whom-ever it was they were talking to before they excused themselves for the minute that has turned into ten or fifteen. Before you know it, everyone’s chattering away with tipsy animation and it’s a party. Sure, there are always a few holdouts, but sooner or later all but the most stridently resistant will get sucked in. Nobody likes to be the odd person out, particularly if all it takes to participate is to stand around sipping something truly delightful, made from a formula that Charles Dickens used to enjoy.

But that’s the true beauty of Punch. The “flowing bowl,” as its devotees used to call it, makes itself the catalyst for, and focus of, a temporary community of drinkers, not unlike the one you’ll find on a good night at a really good neighborhood pub. Admittedly, some will drink a little more than they’re used to; the limpid balance of good Punch makes that easy. One or two might be grievously over-served, but if so, it is by their own hands. The Punch bowl holds dangers as well as delights; it is freedom, and freedom is a test that some must fail. Yet for every Punch-drinker who does, there are five, six, ten, who would agree with the Edinburgh wit John Wilson that “there seems to be a divine air breathed from the surface of a circle of china . . . when a waveless well of punch sleeps within, that soothes every ruder feeling into peace, and awakens in the soul all the finer emotions of sensibility and friendship.”

Punch isn’t Cocktails. The Cocktail is an unforgiving drink, with a very narrow margin of safety. Two Martinis and you’re fine; three and you’re boarding the red-eye to Drunkistan. The little glasses of Punch—the traditional serving is about a sherry glass full, just a couple of ounces—mount up, to be sure, but it’s easy to pull back before you’ve gone too far.
^b
Whatever their octane, though, there’s something particularly exhilarating to drinks based on distilled spirits, and Punch will always share that. As the eighteenth-century song put it,

There’s the crux. Without merriment, life is scarcely worth living. I know there are people who will disagree with that statement—the ethereal, contemplative ones; the efficient, purpose-driven ones; the solitary, the angry, the superior. Punch is not for them. But for the rest of us, the ones who find solace in this grim world in the humor and good nature of our fellow humans, there’s no surer way of concentrating those qualities than around a bowl of Punch.

Finally, a little bit about the present volume. Dozens of recipes for Punch survive from its heyday—hundreds if you include the transitional decades that immediately followed (by then, drink books had become a proven moneymaker, and any recipe you could use to fill a page had value, even if few were going to actually make it). Not only have they never been collected, but there’s never even been a real attempt to determine which ones should be collected. In 1862, the New York firm of Dick & Fitzgerald published Jerry Thomas’s
Bar-Tenders Guide
, alias
How to Mix Drinks, or the Bon Vivant’s Companion
, the world’s first book of its kind (you will find it referred to by each of its three names; I’ll try to stick to
Bar-Tenders Guide
). Even if it hadn’t been the first, it would nonetheless remain the most influential, for one reason: Thomas took the time to make the book something more than a random collection of recipes. He stood before the young and boisterous crowd of American drinks, called them to order and assigned them to classes. In the process, he recognized fine distinctions, identified defining characteristics and excluded a lot of redundant and superfluous recipes. It stands as testament to the intelligence with which he made his choices that, for the most part, his categories still stand today. Unfortunately, the one category that he let in wholesale, utterly unsorted, is Punches. Where “the Professor” feared to tread, his successors have chosen the path of wisdom and stayed their feet as well. (For more on Thomas’s life and drinks, see my 2007 book,
Imbibe!
)

My first tasks, therefore, were to separate the Punches from other, similar drinks, sort them into broad categories and, perhaps most importantly, throw out as many as I possibly could. Punch was merely one of many drinks served in bowls (the preindustrial period saw much more communal drinking than was possible once people had to drive, dial telephones and operate heavy machinery). While they all have their interesting points, I had to be ruthless, lest this book require its own propulsion system to move from point A to point B. So, alas, here you will find no Wassails, Eggnogs, Possets, or other large-bore drinks that are not Punches. The eighteenth century’s Negus and Bishop, Sangaree, Flip and reeking bowl of Whiskey Toddy will, alas, have to wait for another book, as will the Claret Cup and Maitrank and other nineteenth-century low-alcohol delights. They are all, or almost all, delicious drinks served in bowls, but they aren’t Punch, and while I strive not to be doctrinaire in my drinking, to include them would have swelled the size of this book beyond any reasonable bounds. For the same reason, neither will you find here the individual-serving Punches that arose in great profusion once the days of sitting around the flowing bowl began to wane. For what it’s worth, I address many of those in
Imbibe!
, while their Tiki-drink descendants are admirably covered by Jeff Berry in his various works.