XIII
ORANGE PUNCH
Just as there were those who were partisan about the species of liquor with which their Punch was powered, there were those who felt strongly about the species of citrus with which it was soured. If Brandy and Rum Punch get a chapter of their own, then it’s only fitting that Orange Punch does, too.
Orange Punch is a particularly mild and agreeable beverage of considerable antiquity—indeed, if Punch was first made on the East India Company’s ships, it’s worth bearing in mind that they as often had oranges as they did limes. In Britain, oranges start showing up in connection with Punch as early as 1691, when they appear in a definition of the drink in John Worlidge’s Vinetum Britannicum. At first they were only used to supplement lemons, but eventually there arose a faction of tipplers who made their Punch with oranges alone. Some of them could even be found in America, the land of the lime, judging from a 1741 notice in the Salem (Massachusetts) Gazette for “Extraordinary good and very fresh Orange Juice, which some of the very best Punch Tasters prefer to Lemmons, at one dollar per gallon.” That business about the “best tasters” requires a caveat, as it depends on the kind of oranges used. Made with the common sweet orange, Orange Punch, for all its pleasantness, lacks that dynamic tension that the best Punches maintain. In the sport of Punch-making, it’s like going for an easy field goal rather than trying for a touchdown.
In any case, Orange Punch was popular enough by 1732 for Jonathan Swift to have a little bit of fun with it in “An Examination of Certain Abuses, Corruptions and Enormities in the City of Dublin.” The basis of said fun was an old bit of small-scale political theater. Back in the days of William III, scion of the House of Orange, those who continued to support the deposed and exiled James II made it one of their practices to drink toasts to “the squeezing of an orange.” Silly enough, but doing just that was one of the bases for the charge of treason on which Robert Charnock, Edward King and Thomas Keyes were tried for their lives in 1696, found guilty and executed. “Past all doubt,” Swift begins,this liquor [i.e., Punch] is by one important innovation, grown of ill example, and dangerous consequence to the public. It is well known, that, by the true original institution of making punch . . . the sharpness is only occasioned by the juice of lemons, and so . . . Oranges, alas! are a mere innovation, and in a manner but of yesterday. It was the politics of Jacobites to introduce them gradually . . . cunningly to shew their virulence against his sacred Majesty King William, of ever glorious and immortal memory. But of late, (to shew how fast disloyalty increaseth) they came from one or two, and then to three oranges; nay, at present we often find punch made all with oranges, and not one single lemon.
Of course, Swift knew full well that most of the people who were squeezing oranges into their Punch weren’t doing it as symbolic magic against their political enemies (i.e., “as I squeeze this Orange so may the D——d Whigs be squoze”). They were doing it because they liked the way the oranges tasted. His beef here was not with the drinkers of Orange Punch but with the paranoid and conspiracy-obsessed. And besides, if he were seriously impugning the drinkers of Orange Punch, he’d be impugning anyone who drank at James Ashley’s, and no man of sense would want to mess with the litigious Mr. Ashley.
JAMES ASHLEY’S PUNCH
At the beginning of 1731, Ashley, a thirty-three-year-old “wholesale dealer in cheese,” abandoned that line of work, it “not suiting his turn” (as the Monthly Magazine wrote in 1796). Instead, he opened the “London Coffee-House and Punch-House,” on the north side of Ludgate Hill right next to the old medieval gate. The cheese trade must have been good to him, as it seems to have been a pretty large place, not wide but very deep, with rooms ranged along a narrow passageway that led to a court in the back from which one could scuttle through other passageways and end up at the Old Bailey. But Ashley was no dope. Those who knew him described the Northampton native as “an intelligent cheerful man” who was “intimately acquainted with every remarkable transaction in the history of London” and “well versed in the history and laws of his country.” Perhaps too well in the latter: according to the Monthly Magazine, his business “would have been greatly productive, had he not contracted a taste for litigation, which involved him in many tedious and expensive law suits.” This statement is borne out by Ashley’s sole publication, a 1753 pamphlet giving his side of one of them. It would probably have been better for him, and for us, if he had written about something he knew even better than law and history—making Punch. Ashley, you see, was no ordinary Punch-maker; he was, in fact, the world’s first celebrity mixologist, the first man to become famous for compounding and selling a mixed drink.
Everybody knew James Ashley. Some did from drinking Punch at his establishment: Hogarth was a patron, the young James Boswell stopped in one night in 1763 for “three threepenny bowls” in between bouts with sixpenny whores,aw Oliver Goldsmith took the temperature of the town there and, for a time, Benjamin Franklin’s “Club of Honest Whigs” was one of the many it hosted. Others knew him from the newspapers—not so much from the editorial content, although he appeared in that often enough, as from the advertisements. I don’t think a day went by between March 1731, when Ashley first took to print, and July 1776, when he died, that one of his ads didn’t appear in a London newspaper. Not everyone drank in Punch houses or lounged around in coffeehouses reading newspapers, but even those who didn’t would have known Ashley, if only because Ludgate Hill was a major shopping street and if you walked down it you couldn’t miss the two iron Punch bowls on ornate openwork pedestals that flanked his door, with a third above it. If those didn’t grab you, the words he had painted in massive letters on the front of his building would:PRO BONO PUBLICO
JAMES ASHLEY IN 1731
FIRST REDUCED THE PRICE OF PUNCH
RAISED ITS REPUTATION
AND BROUGHT IT INTO
UNIVERSAL ESTEEM
One of Ashley’s early advertisements. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION
They certainly made an impression; for many years whenever anyone made protestations that their profitable actions were being done “for the public good,” Ashley and his “pro bono publico”—“for the public good”—was sure to be invoked.
Not that his claim was wrong, mind you. It was overstated, to be sure—Alexander Radcliffe, Ned Ward and Lord Russell might have given him an argument about the last three lines (then again, Russell would argue with anybody about anything). But Ashley’s constant promotion certainly did nothing to hurt Punch. And the price part was absolutely correct: as Fielding’s Tom Thumb confirms, “the settled Price throughout the Town” (as Ashley’s earliest ads noted) was eight shillings for a quart of arrack made into Punch, and six for brandy or rum. Ashley’s prices? Six and four shillings respectively. His innovations didn’t stop there. Six shillings was still a hell of an outlay, the equivalent of almost two hundred dollars. Of course, a quart of spirits made for a large bowl; there were smaller. But if Ashley is to be believed, even those customarily only went down to one shilling sixpence, or just shy of fifty dollars, for which you would get a half-pint of liquor. Here he broke ranks: rather than a half-pint, he set as the smallest quantity of spirits he’d make into Punch the almost trivial measure of a half quartern, or two ounces. Suddenly we’re in Cocktail territory: rather than a bowl of Punch, this would give the drinker one not very large glass. For that, he would pay three to four and a half pence, depending on the liquor—say, eight to twelve dollars. (A quart of porter, by contrast, also cost threepence.)
The London Punch-House’s titular beverage was not only retailed by the glass (known as a “sneaker,” “tiff” or “rub”), but going by the claims in Ashley’s ads, it was also mixed to order—“the Sherbett is always brought by itself, and the Brandy, Rum and Arrack in the Measure”—and so quickly that “Gentlemen may have it as soon made as a Gill of Wine can be drawn.” To make a system like that work, Ashley had to prepare his shrub in advance—the “acid” in it being “all Orange Jui
ce”—and bottle it. Then it was easy: show the customer the spirit in the measure, pour it into the proper-size bowl, pour in two measures’ worth of shrub (I would’ve used the same measure), nutmeg and done. The fact that Ashley made rather a big deal of all these practices indicates that they were not standard, as does the amount of time he spent complaining in his ads about imitators and even the amount of time some of his imitators spent frankly acknowledging his influence.ax This was professional Punch-making on a higher level. This was bartending.
And yet it’s unlikely that Ashley himself was doing any of it. Sure, someone was in the little compartment set in the wall that served as a bar in eighteenth-century Punch- and coffeehouses; someone was serving out Punch to the “egregious sots / Who pour its Poison down devouring Throats / . . . standing at the Bar / At Ashley’s,” as Joseph Mitchell wrote in his 1735 “A Curse Upon Punch.”ay But that somebody was in all likelihood not James Ashley for the simple reason that, as we have noted, in England, “bar-keeper” was not a man’s job. And indeed, along with portraits of Ashley and his wife, we find that his friend Thomas Worlidge (alias “the English Rembrandt”) executed one of “a Mrs. Gaywood, their bar-keeper.” So. A mixologist, perhaps, our Mr. Ashley, but not a bartender. Whatever he was, he did it well enough to stay in business for forty-five years: when he died, on July 7, 1776, the London Punch-House was still going strong.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
ADVERTISEMENTS.
At the Foreign Brandy, Rum and Arrack Cellars, under my House on Ludgate Hill,
Are to be sold, choice and good as ever were imported, and warranted entirely neat,
Brandy and Rum at 7 s. 6 d. per Gallon, but in no less Quantity than five Gallons; all under 8 s. per Gallon.
A parcel of superfine Batavia Arrack, at 12 s. per Gallon.
This House I opened solely for making of Punch (and was the first that undertook to make it in small Proportions, and reduced the extravagant Price.)
Where, to the greatest Perfection, the said most excellent Brandies, Rum and Arrack made into Punch, viz.
A Quart of Arrack made into Punch for 6 s. and so in proportion to half a Quartern for 4 d. half penny.
A Quart of Rum or Brandy made into Punch for 4 s. and so in proportion to half a Quartern for 3 d.
And, that the Fairness of this undertaking may appear to every one, the Sherbett is always brought by itself, and the Brandy, Rum and Arrack in the Measure; by means whereof there can be no Imposition either in the Quality or Quantity.
As also, for the better accommodating Gentlemen at their own Houses, I do undertake (by a peculiar Management in the Acid, which is all Orange Juice) to make any Quantities of the said most excellent Brandies or Rum into Punch, as they shall order, at 4s. per Gallon, (one third whereof to be Brandy or Rum;) and I will warrant it to keep so, that there shall not be the least Variation or Alteration for 12 Months, and shall retain the same Life, Quickness and Perfection, to that Time, as no person can discover but that its [sic] just made.
Buy and sell for Ready Money only,
London Punch-House J. Ashley.
SOURCE: Grub Street Journal, January 1736
SUGGESTED PROCEDURE
For a four-shilling bowl, prepare an oleo-saccharum with the peel of four Seville oranges and 1 cup of light raw sugar, such as Florida Crystals. Add 16 ounces of hot water and stir to dissolve sugar. Add 8 ounces of strained Seville orange juice and stir. Add enough water to bring this up to a full quart, pour it into a clean bottle, seal and refrigerate.
To serve, pour a quart of this “sherbett”; a quart of proof-strength (i.e., around 57 percent alcohol by volume) VS-grade cognac, Jamaican rum or (for a six-shilling bowl) Batavia arrack; and a quart of cold water into a bowl and grate nutmeg over the top. If you wish to add ice, add ice. This is enough for one treble, or three-quart, bowl.
NOTES
I have recommended the oleo-saccharum here to reflect a line in the 1738 poem “Brandy,” by “A Youth,” which has Ashley’s festooned with “od’rous orange-peels, in rows thick strung, / Trophies of num’rous past exploits.” Now, this suggests that the peels were tossed into the bowl and fished out later as mementos of the bowls sold (we’ve all been to joints that do something similar). Equally, they might have been hung up to dry so that they could be reconstituted when Seville oranges were out of season (simply simmer them in water and add sugar). At least we know that orange peel fitted in to the proceedings somehow. We know that the juice was strained because in May 1731, after only being open for a couple of months, Ashley was advertising for the return of his “Silver Orange Strainer,” which some light-fingered toper had walked off with.
We’re equally ignorant as to the exact procedure Mrs. Gaywood and her colleagues followed in serving their Punch—we know the spirits and the “sherbett,” or shrub, were presented separately, but was the sherbet fully diluted or did water have to be added as well? I’m assuming that it was made in bulk and cellared, in which case it would keep better if less diluted. Accordingly, I’ve kept most of the water on the side. That also allows one to serve this Punch hot (use boiling water). More importantly, Ashley’s specialty being Brandy Punch, this allows us to achieve period accuracy by compensating for the understrength brandy we usually get: for that treble bowl, simply use 44 ounces cognac and cut the added cold water back to 20 ounces. (Truth be told, I would have found the eighteenth century challenging, as I find this Punch plenty strong with a mere quart of 80-proof brandy.)
YIELD: 12 cups.
AMERICAN ORANGE PUNCH
On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson, just sworn in as the seventh president of the United States, hosted a grand inaugural reception at the White House. As an expression of his small-“d” democratic principles, he broke precedent and threw it open to the people who had elected him. The public (okay, mostly office-seekers) turned out in droves and—well, let’s let a contemporary newspaper tell the rest.
All the lower rooms of the President’s house were filled. Among a great deal of well behaved company, it was painful to see a large number who seemed to forget the dignified occasion and the respectable place where they were assembled. . . . A profusion of refreshments had been provided. Orange punch by barrels full was made, but as the waiters opened the doors to bring it out, a rush would be made, the glasses broken, the pails of liquor upset, and the most painful confusion prevailed. To such a degree was this carried, that wine and ice-cream could not be brought out to the ladies, and tubs of punch were taken from the lower story into the garden to lead off the crowd from the rooms.
He never did that again.
This recipe hails from Jerry Thomas, who adapted it from the 1858 Bordeaux Wine and Liquor Dealers’ Guide: A Treatise on the Manufacture and Adulteration of Liquors. This intriguing little volume, which has nothing to do with Bordeaux, is accurately subtitled at least, with a heavy emphasis on the adulteration part. The following formula is pretty much the most wholesome thing in it. At least it doesn’t call for “spirits of nitre” or “acetic ether.” If made with Seville oranges, this will be sweet and complex; otherwise, sweet and mild.
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
From a recipe in the Bordeaux Wine & Liquor Guide
The juice of 3 or 4 oranges.
The peel of 1 or 2 oranges.
¾ lb lump sugar.
3½ pints of boiling water.
Infuse half an hour, strain, add ½ pint of porter; ¾ to 1 pint each, rum and brandy (or either alone 1½ to 2 pints) and add more warm water and sugar, if desired weaker or sweeter. A liqueur glass of Curacoa, noyau, or maraschino improves it. A good lemon punch may be made by substituting lemons instead of oranges.
SOURCE: Jerry Thomas, Bar-Tenders Guide, 1862
NOTES
Prepare an oleo-saccharum with the peels and the sugar (use a light, raw one), then add the boiling water and proceed with the porter and liquors. For rum, deploy the usual Pirate Juice style, or at least a blend of that and a Planter’s Best
one, and best to go for the full pint of both it and the cognac. The question of liqueurs will be addressed later, under Regent’s Punch. Ice is highly recommended here.
YIELD: 16 cups.
XIV
WHISKEY PUNCH
Arrack Punch is all well and good if you don’t mind sending your hard-earned £, s. and d. to foreigners living at the approximate ends of the earth. The same objection applies to “Coniack” and “Nantz,” save that the foreigners are nearer, better armed and much more French. As for “kill-devil,” or rum, it was a domestic product by some standards, but the excise tax on it went to Parliament and the profit to the pockets of those with the where-withal to finance sugarcane plantations three thousand miles across the ocean and man them with slaves. Nothing in any of ’em for the yeomen of Britain, for the farmers.
One man, at least, tried to help them. William of Orange, being a canny Dutchman and thus free from some of the prejudices of the English when it came to potables, pushed a series of acts through Parliament for the encouragement of grain-distilling in England and the discouragement of the importation of foreign wines and spirits. These were effective, up to a point: between 1684 and 1694, English grain-distilling almost doubled, to well over a million gallons a year. And yet the only people who drank this domestic malt spirit were those who could get no better. (We’ll talk about them in the next chapter.) The English opinion of grain spirits remained decidedly low. In 1696, French brandy went for a hundred pounds a barrel, while English malt spirits—essentially, whiskey—fetched less than a quarter of that. As late as 1744, the philosopher George Berkeley, a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, could sniff that “Whiskey is a spirit distilled from malt, the making of which poison, cheap and plenty, as being of our growth, is esteemed, by some unlucky patriots, as a benefit to their country.” Far better to drink “tar-water,” as he recommended. In Ireland, where Berkeley was born and intermittently lived, his was distinctly a minority opinion.
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