Imbibe!
Page 10
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: The brandy should, of course, be cognac. For the Catawba, see the Chatham Artillery Punch (page 94). In 1887, though, the revised edition of Thomas’s book calls for sherry instead; the results are not bad (use an oloroso).
NOTES ON EXECUTION: Begin by dissolving the sugar in the lemon juice.
69TH REGIMENT PUNCH
Where the Seventh was Fifth Avenue, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth (a nickname given to it by Robert E. Lee) was the old East Side. Irish, Catholic, rough and tumble, Democratic, it was everything its rival wasn’t, and vice versa. It fought just as hard, though, if not harder. Repeatedly cut to pieces at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, it nonetheless fought through until Appomattox. The unit is still around and still fighting hard, having lost nineteen members to date in Iraq.
The Sixty-Ninth’s Punch, homely but stalwart, stands in the same relation to the Seventh’s that the Fighting Irish did to the National Guard.
The Punch combines Scotch and Irish whiskies, which is rather puzzling, what with the Scots being largely Protestant—not entirely, though, and if you use a malt from the Western Highlands, which are still in part Catholic, you might just be able to squeak by.
(IN EARTHEN MUG.)
½ WINE-GLASS [1 OZ] OF IRISH WHISKEY
½ WINE-GLASS [1 OZ] OF SCOTCH WHISKY
1 TEA-SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
1 PIECE OF LEMON
2 WINE-GLASSES [4 OZ] OF HOT WATER
This is a capital punch for a cold night.
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: Both whiskies should be pot-still, if at all possible; see the Whisky Skin (page 144). The sugar should be Demerara or turbinado. The lemon—use a half-wheel—can be reduced to a long strip of peel.
NOTES ON EXECUTION: See the Hot Toddy (page 137).
HOT MILK PUNCH
The nineteenth century may have lacked Ambien, but it had this.
(USE LARGE BAR-GLASS.)
1 TABLE-SPOONFUL OF FINE WHITE SUGAR
1 WINE-GLASS [2 OZ] OF COGNAC BRANDY
½ WINE-GLASS [1 OZ] OF SANTA CRUZ RUM
Fill with [hot] milk, [stir] the ingredients well together, and grate a little nutmeg on top.
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862 (COMPOSITE)
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: Again, the spirits can be safely reduced here without affecting the drink’s epicurean qualities.
NOTES ON EXECUTION: As the reviser of Jerry Thomas’s book reminds us, “in preparing any kind of a hot drink, the glass should always be first rinsed rapidly with hot water; if this is not done the drink cannot be served sufficiently hot to suit a fastidious customer.”
II. THREE BOWLS OF AMERICAN PUNCH
In general, the Bowl of Punch was a transatlantic institution, with—give or take a little smuggled French brandy or native New England rum—pretty much the same things going into the bowl in Britain and America, so that, for instance, George IV’s favorite tipple, Regent’s Punch, turns up as a specialty of Albany, New York (I will not speculate why). Here, though, are three characteristically American formulae for charging the Punch bowl.
PHILADELPHIA FISH-HOUSE PUNCH
Fish-House Punch is thrice blessed. Its name is memorable and strangely alluring, its history is august and eccentric, and its formula is delicious and deadly. The greatest of all American Punches, it deserves to be protected by law, taught in the schools, and made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July celebration, with dilute portions given to those not yet of legal age, so that they may be accustomed to the taste.
The eighteenth-century Englishman was an extremely clubbable fellow. He formed regular social associations at the drop of a tricorn hat. Many were rather informal affairs, a few friends meeting at a set time and place to push the port around a bit and drain a bowl or two of Punch, preferably with a roast to keep body and soul together. Others were a little more eccentric. Take the Colony of Schuylkill, a rod and gun club founded by thirty of William Penn’s followers on the banks of the Schuylkill in 1732, when Americans were still English. First off, they claimed that their little acre of land was an independent colony of its own, complete with governor, secretary of state, assembly, code of laws, coroner, and sheriff. After the War of Independence, they changed their name—along with everyone else—from colony to state. As the State in Schuylkill (exactly why they changed “of ” to “in” I’ve never quite been able to grasp), they persisted through thick and thin, moving their simple wooden fishing-house (the “Castle”) once or twice when civilization encroached, giving up the hunting when the woods got too crowded to have bullets flying through them and the fishing when the refuse from the gas-works upstream killed the river. But no matter; every other Wednesday from May to October, year in and year out for more than two hundred years the twenty-five “citizens” and five “apprentices,” or citizens-in-training, would gather to execute the club’s business. For all I know, they may be there still.
That “business”? Eating and drinking and precious little else. But what set the State in Schuylkill apart from other rich-people’s clubs is that its “citizens” traditionally did all the work. There was no staff to do the marketing, sweep out the Castle, gut the fish (the Coroner did that), build the fire, plank the shad, truss the pig, grill the steaks, or brew the Punch. All pitched in, each according to his abilities, the citizens instructing the apprentices. And when guests came (each member was allowed one), they pitched in, too. In 1825, Marquis de Lafayette turned steaks on the grill. I don’t know what they had George Washington doing when he visited in 1787, but rumor has it that in 1882 Chester Arthur—the only other sitting president to be a guest—donned an apron and shelled peas.
The club’s world-renowned “Fish-House Punch” was traditionally made in a large bowl that did double duty as a baptismal font for the citizens’ infant sons; “its ample space . . . would indeed admit of total immersion,” as one citizen noted. I doubt that there was Punch in it at the time—it was far too precious for such usage, and far too potent. The earliest recipe I have for it comes from Jerry Thomas, who evidently got it in turn from an issue of Frederick S. Cozzens’s Wine Press, who got it from Charles Godfrey Leland, a Philadelphia lawyer who was primarily known for his literary endeavors. Since he was also a citizen of the State in Schuylkill, his formula for the stuff—“as delicious as [the famous Punch] of London civic banquets,” as he recalled in his memoirs—must be considered authentic, although alas it can no longer be executed as written. But even in its modern, fallen state, Fish-House Punch lives up to the old verses:
There’s a little place just out of town,
Where, if you go to lunch,
They’ll make you forget your mother-in-law
With a drink called Fish-House Punch.
[FOR QUANTITIES, SEE NOTES ON INGREDIENTS.]
(FROM A RECIPE IN THE POSSESSION OF CHARLES G. LELAND, ESQ.)
1/3 PINT OF LEMON JUICE
¾ POUND OF WHITE SUGAR
1 PINT OF MIXTURE*
2½ PINTS OF COLD WATER
THE ABOVE IS GENERALLY SUFFICIENT FOR ONE PERSON.
* TO MAKE THIS MIXTURE, TAKE ¼ PINT OF PEACH BRANDY,½ PINT OF COGNAC BRANDY, AND ¼ PINT OF JAMAICA RUM.
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: There’s too much sugar in this, but that’s the least of our problems here. The thing that’s so high we can’t get over it, so deep we can’t get under it, is the complete disappearance of real peach brandy. With other great archeological ingredients like Batavia arrack, Holland gin and absinthe, at least we have some recourse—they’re still made somewhere in the world, after all, and with a little persistence, ingenuity, and cash they can be secured or imitated. With peach brandy, we’re screwed. A dry eau-de-vie that was distilled from peaches and their pits and then aged in oak barrels, often for many years, real peach brandy never really came back after Prohibition. Maybe it’s because the Southern states that specia
lized in it caught the Baptist anti-booze flu early; maybe it was just too pungent or too expensive. Fortunately, the State in Schuylkill outlived it and made its own adjustments. These work out to adding 1 ounce of the modern, sweet peach brandy to 9 ounces of brandy and 6 of rum (there are some good recipes that reverse the proportion of cognac and rum; if that’s what you like, go ahead).
You will note Leland’s statement on quantity. He may not be kidding. For the modern partygoer, though, free from having to plank shad and shell peas in the great outdoors before stuffing himself to the bursting point with fish and pig and beef, it may be a bit much. The best solution, I find, is to triple the recipe—1 pint of lemon juice, 1 pound or a little more of Demerara sugar, 3 ounces of peach brandy (use a good brand like Marie Brizard, if you can), 27 ounces of cognac, 18 ounces of rum, and 3 quarts of water—and try to serve twelve to fifteen with it.
NOTES ON EXECUTION: Before juicing the lemons, peel three of them with a swivel-bladed vegetable peeler, doing your best to avoid including the pith. In a large bowl, muddle the peels in with the sugar until as much as possible of the lemon oil has been extracted (this was known to the old adepts at making Punch as “preparing the oleo-saccharum”). Heat 1 pint of the water to boiling and add it to the bowl, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Fish out the lemon peels, add the lemon juice, the liquor, and the rest of the water. Let this cool in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours, add a large block of ice (this can be made by freezing a gallon bowl of water overnight) and serve.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN PUNCH
If the Major James Foster, whom Thomas credits for this famous recipe, is the same as the Colonel James Foster of St. Joseph, Missouri, who came home from the Idaho diggings in 1864 bearing suspiciously accurate tales of vigilante justice—highwaymen hung, banditti bearded in their lairs by concerned citizens, posses winkling desperados out of their lairs with “mounted howitzers”—it adds extra savor to this already plenty savory Punch.
To look at the recipe for Rocky Mountain Punch is to assume that the name is merely honorific, assigned from the comfort of a club chair two thousand miles from Pikes Peak and the rough and ready life of the mines. But that would be a mistake. In all but the most precarious and temporary camps, the supply of fine drink was an item of paramount concern to what was by certain standards an unhealthily large proportion of the population, and items like champagne, Jamaica rum, maraschino liqueur, and lemons were often available when things like vegetables, eggs, and soap weren’t.
Rocky Mountain Punch retained its popularity as a banquet-drink through the end of the century, both in its native precincts and among the artificial canyons of the urban East.
(FOR A MIXED PARTY OF TWENTY.)
(FROM A RECIPE IN THE POSSESSION OF MAJOR JAMES FOSTER.)
THIS DELICIOUS PUNCH IS COMPOUNDED AS FOLLOWS:
5 BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE
1 QUART OF JAMAICA RUM
1 PINT OF MARASCHINO
6 LEMONS, SLICED
SUGAR TO TASTE
Mix the above ingredients in a large punch-bowl, then place in the centre of the bowl a large square block of ice, ornamented on top with rock candy, loaf-sugar, sliced lemons or oranges, and fruits in season. This is a splendid punch for New Year’s Day.
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: Use superfine sugar, or substitute gum syrup. How much is needed will depend on the dryness of the champagne and the sweetness of the maraschino liqueur, which might be sufficient all by itself. If it’s not, begin with 2 ounces and adjust upward by taste.
NOTES ON EXECUTION: Steep the lemon slices in the combined rum and maraschino for at least 4 hours before assembly. For improvising a block of ice, see Philadelphia Fish-House Punch (page 89).
CHATHAM ARTILLERY PUNCH
Finally, a Punch not from Jerry Thomas. The Chatham Artillery of Savannah was a Social-Register militia of considerable antiquity (it was formed in 1786) that spent far more time parading and partying than it did loading cannons and shooting them, at least until those hotheads up the coast in Charleston fired on Fort Sumter. After seeing considerable action in its neck of the woods, part of the battery was captured in 1864 and the rest surrendered in 1865. Eventually, it was reconstituted, going on to serve in the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and on, until the present, As I write this, it—or rather its successor, the 118th Battalion of the Georgia National Guard—is deployed in Iraq.
Back in the day, it was not a unit that deprived itself of the good things in life, as long as such were to be had. As Charles Jones recalled in 1867, at the beginning of the Civil War “the cuisine of the company was perfect” and “the well fed Artillery-man, enjoying his champagne punch within the comfortable casemates, little thought of the coming day when even a glass of Confederate whisky could not be obtained.”
I don’t know precisely when the below recipe made its debut or its connection to Jones’s “champagne punch,” but by the end of the century the Chatham Artillery’s house Punch was a byword for its seductiveness and potency. One Georgia newspaper assured its readers in 1883 that “there is such a beverage made and known as artillery punch. We are living witnesses to the fact that it is no misnomer. When it attacketh a man it layeth him low and he knoweth not whence he cometh or whither he goeth.” That was Admiral Dewey’s experience of it, anyway, when he visited Savannah in 1900, just as it was Chester Arthur’s a few years before and William Howard Taft’s a few years after. The Baltimore American summed up its reputation in a poem, or at least a limerick:
When you visit the town of Savannah
Enlist ’neath the temperance banneh,
For if you should lunch,
On artillery punch,
It will treat you in sorrowful manneh.
The city’s boosters conceded its strength, but claimed that the skill with which the locals concocted it mitigated the damage; that “in Savannah, it puts a man to bed like a gentleman; outside of Savannah it makes him a howling imbecile, a laughing-stock for the populace, and a victim for the police barracks.”
Although the Punch’s composition was supposedly no secret, I have been unable to find a formula for it earlier than 1897, when a member of the Georgia Pharmaceutical Society contributed sketchy and manifestly incomplete instructions for it to a trade journal. The version below, printed a decade later, is somewhat better, although it nonetheless bears clear signs of corruption. (Its source admits as much when it says that “its vigor in those days [i.e., when the Chatham Artillery was founded] was much greater than at present, experience having taught the rising generation to modify the receipt of their forefathers to conform to the weaker constitutions of their progeny.”)
1 GALLON CATAWBA WINE, LIGHT COLOR
1 QUART ST. CROIX RUM
4 CANS SLICED PINEAPPLES
2½ DOZEN LEMONS
3 ORANGES
1 BOTTLE OF MARASCHINO CHERRIES
2 CUPS OF STRONG GREEN TEA
4 BOTTLES OF CHAMPAGNE (AMERICAN WILL DO AS WELL AS IM-
PORTED)
Mix the juices of the lemons, pineapples and liquor of the cherries with the Catawba wine, St. Croix rum and tea, then sweeten to taste. This is known as the stock, and improves with age.
Before serving, this should be cooled in a refrigerator, or by placing a piece of ice in it.
When ready to serve, put a piece of ice in the punch bowl, then pour in the stock, leaving room for a prorate part of the Champagne.As each charge is put into the bowl, oranges and pineapples sliced into small particles, and cherries, should be added in proportion to the amount used.
The stock should be kept at least two days before serving.
SOURCE: PERCY HAMMOND AND GEORGE C. WHARTON, POKER, SMOKE AND OTHER THINGS, 1907
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: First off, the Catawba presents a challenge. If you can find some (it’s still made on a small scale), use it. Otherwise, any sweet and fruity domestic wine of a tolerable quality will do, especially if it’s pink (paging white zin . . . ). Then the pineap
ple: It should be fresh, not canned. For this amount, 2 whole pineapples should do, sliced into chunks. As for the maraschino cherries, these are not present in the 1897 version. Instead, a quart of whiskey (use rye) is added. Here’s that greater vigor. That same recipe also calls for sufficient strawberries to flavor and color the Punch (a quart should do, cored and cut in half). This must be right, since it gives the Punch a rich red color, and red is the traditional color of the artillery. If used, you’ll need more sugar.
NOTES ON EXECUTION: Pretty much as directed, except adding the pineapple chunks and strawberries (if used) at the beginning instead of the canned and bottled juices, and omitting the pineapple particles and cherries at the end. This would benefit, as all Punches do, by preparing an oleo-saccharum at the beginning (see Philadelphia Fish-House Punch (page 89); start with ½ cup sugar). If you’re incorporating strawberries, muddle them in with the lemon peel and the sugar, add the citrus and strain before proceeding with the rest of the assembly.