Punch (33 page)
Authors: David Wondrich
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
BOSTON CLUB PUNCH
THE ORIGINAL FORMULA
BOMBAY GOVERNMENT PUNCH
This celebrated punch is made from a stock, which can be kept in bottles, and at any time will produce an excellent punch by the addition of soda-water or Champagne and ice, and is very useful in that it can be prepared on the spur of the moment. In making the stock, care should be used that the tea should not be drawn long enough before using to become bitter. When the stock has been made it should be tightly bottled, and placed in a comparatively cool place. The following is the composition of the stock:
Jamaica rum, 1 quart,
Brandy, 1 quart,
Strong black tea, 1 quart,
Port wine, 1 quart,
Lemons, 12,
White sugar, 3 cups,
Curaçao, ½ pint.
Just before serving add 10 bottles of soda-water to 3 quarts of stock. Use plenty of ice.
SOURCE: Mary Louise Hoyt Barrol,
Around-the-World Cook Book
, 1913
SUGGESTED PROCEDUREAround-the-World Cook Book
, 1913
Prepare an oleo-saccharum with the peel of the lemons and the sugar. Stir in 18 ounces of strained lemon juice and the tea (made with 4 teaspoons of loose tea or four bags, infused for no more than five minutes). Add the liquors, strain, bottle and chill. To serve, pour into Punch bowl halfway full of ice cubes and add 1 liter chilled seltzer for every quart of stock.
NOTES
Regarding the rum, this Punch is tough enough to stand up to a full-on Pirate Juice or even a Batavia arrack (in honor of the
Richmond
’s epic Asian cruise); for the brandy, go with a VSOP cognac. A ruby port of not very distinguished pedigree will do fine. For the curaçao, however, you’ll want Grand Marnier, or at least Gran Gala. Nutmeg over the top is very welcome here.
Richmond
’s epic Asian cruise); for the brandy, go with a VSOP cognac. A ruby port of not very distinguished pedigree will do fine. For the curaçao, however, you’ll want Grand Marnier, or at least Gran Gala. Nutmeg over the top is very welcome here.
If laying your USS
Richmond
Punch down as a “stock” (a term of art in late American Punch-making for an aged mixture of everything but the water or Champagne), it’s best to let the sediment settle for a couple of weeks and then siphon off the clear liquid.
Richmond
Punch down as a “stock” (a term of art in late American Punch-making for an aged mixture of everything but the water or Champagne), it’s best to let the sediment settle for a couple of weeks and then siphon off the clear liquid.
The Honest Rainmaker: The Life and Times of Colonel John R. Stingo
is A. J. Liebling’s great ode to the sporting life. A book-length debriefing of one James A. MacDonald, who as “Col. Stingo” wrote the racing column for the
Enquirer
(at the time a New York paper, not a national one),
The Honest Rainmaker
is a fire hose of old-school palaver, the kind they don’t make anymore. Detailing fifty years’ worth of wagers, scams, cons, schemes and benders, all executed with impeccable front despite restricted financing, the book out-Runyons Runyon at every turn.
is A. J. Liebling’s great ode to the sporting life. A book-length debriefing of one James A. MacDonald, who as “Col. Stingo” wrote the racing column for the
Enquirer
(at the time a New York paper, not a national one),
The Honest Rainmaker
is a fire hose of old-school palaver, the kind they don’t make anymore. Detailing fifty years’ worth of wagers, scams, cons, schemes and benders, all executed with impeccable front despite restricted financing, the book out-Runyons Runyon at every turn.
Among the many literary gems the book offers is this awe-inspiring account of the prelunch libations of Dominick O’Malley, editor of the
New Orleans Item
and one of the young MacDonald’s first bosses in the newspaper business, back around 1890. (The lunch itself, which Liebling goes on to recount in loving detail, is at Antoine’s and on a scale commensurate with the aperitif. It begins with four dozen oysters, carrying on through things like “a red snapper flambee in absinthe,” a salmi of woodcock and snipe, a chateaubriand, “
bleu
,” and a whole lot of other stuff too delicious to dwell on.)
New Orleans Item
and one of the young MacDonald’s first bosses in the newspaper business, back around 1890. (The lunch itself, which Liebling goes on to recount in loving detail, is at Antoine’s and on a scale commensurate with the aperitif. It begins with four dozen oysters, carrying on through things like “a red snapper flambee in absinthe,” a salmi of woodcock and snipe, a chateaubriand, “
bleu
,” and a whole lot of other stuff too delicious to dwell on.)
Exactly how much Liebling embellished Stingo’s recollections and how much truth there was in them in the first place are open questions. In this case, anyway, the details check out: Dominick O’Malley did edit the
Item
; the St. Charles still stood then; you’ll find the Sazerac and the Silver Gin Fizz in any historically minded Cocktail book (including, of course,
Imbibe!
); the Boston Club, at the head of Carondelet Street, was indeed the most exclusive in the city; and while Hymen’s remains untraced, Fabacher’s Rathskeller, at Royal and Iberville, was a popular restaurant that, although it had no bar per se, still did a lively trade in drinks.
Item
; the St. Charles still stood then; you’ll find the Sazerac and the Silver Gin Fizz in any historically minded Cocktail book (including, of course,
Imbibe!
); the Boston Club, at the head of Carondelet Street, was indeed the most exclusive in the city; and while Hymen’s remains untraced, Fabacher’s Rathskeller, at Royal and Iberville, was a popular restaurant that, although it had no bar per se, still did a lively trade in drinks.
The Punch checks out, too, at least from the perspective of mixology. Although fearsomely complex, once assembly is completed, it reveals itself as an elegant, refined and most insinuating tipple that is entirely consistent with the state of the Punch-maker’s art in the decades right before Prohibition. It’s worth noting that the Boston Club itself (yes, it still exists) lacks the pure-blooded elegance it once had, judging by what it’s currently passing off as Boston Club Punch, which is simply a large, watery Bourbon Sour with a few dashes of orange-flower water.
Mr. O’Malley had abandoned his desk at the usual hour of twelve and betaken himself for prandial relaxation first to the bar of the St. Charles Hotel, where he had a three-bagger of Sazeracs, then to Hymen’s bar on Common Street, where he increased his apéritif by four silver gin fizzes and after that over to Farbacher’s saloon on Royal where he had a schooner or two of Boston Club punch. O’Malley was not of that sangpur elegance which would have got him past the portal of the august Boston Club, the most revered in New Orleans, but he had bribed a fancy girl to wheedle the formula from the Boston Club bartender. It consisted of twelve bottles of Champagne, eight bottles of white wine, one and one half bottles raspberry syrup, one half bottle brandy, one half bottle kirschwasser, one quarter bottle Jamaica rum, one quarter bottle Curacao, two pineapples, two dozen oranges, two and one half lbs. sugar, seltzer and ice. This was enough to serve several persons.
SOURCE: A. J. Liebling,
The Honest Rainmaker
, 1952
SUGGESTED PROCEDUREThe Honest Rainmaker
, 1952
Prepare an oleo-saccharum of twenty-four oranges and 5 cups white sugar. Peel, core and dice the pineapples into half-inch chunks, add to the oleo-saccharum and muddle. Add the juice of the oranges and stir until sugar is dissolved. Strain the liquid into a three-gallon sealable container, pressing the pulp to extract as much of its essence as possible. Add 36 ounces organic raspberry syrup, 12 ounces cognac, 12 ounces kirschwasser, 6 ounces Jamaican rum, 6 ounces Grand Marnier and eight 750-milliliter bottles dry French white wine. Cover the jug and refrigerate for an hour or two. At this point, the Punch stock can also be bottled and kept refrigerated; if run through a fine filter after a few days, it will keep for a very long time indeed.
To serve, pour the stock into a very large Punch bowl over a very large block of ice and add a case of Champagne and 6 to 9 liters seltzer.
NOTES
The rum is here to provide bouquet and should be a full-on Pirate Juice; the cognac, VSOP.
The yield here is 120 cups. That’s a lot of Punch. Indeed, I must confess that I have never made the full recipe. It can be easily scaled down, though, by following this formula: for every bottle of Champagne, add 3½ ounces sugar, the juice and rind of two oranges, one-sixth of a pineapple, 3 ounces raspberry syrup, 1 ounce each cognac and kirschwasser, ½ ounce each Jamaican rum and Grand Marnier, 1 pint white wine and a liter of seltzer.
EPILOGUE
FOUR ORIGINAL PUNCHES
The efflorescence of American Punch-making would prove to be brief: by the 1880s, in the new steam-powered, electric-lit, heavy-machinery America, occasions for gents to flit around the bowl like so many bearded hummingbirds were becoming scarce. The old leisurely slosh of club life, where Punch had been the order of the day for a century and a half, was on the wane. Rather than sideboards groaning under gargantuan bowls whose contents were curated by dedicated, one-drink specialists, clubhouses now featured full bars manned by expert, saloon-style barkeepers who turned out individual—and individualized—Cocktails in endless profusion. Drink what you like, but do it quick. Even the venerable Hoboken Turtle Club, once famous for the peculiar savoriness of its Champagne Punch, had taken to breakfasting on Cocktails by the pitcher (that way “you can’t tell how many cocktails a man has drunk,” as the club’s bartender observed in 1893).
At the other great bastion of Punch-drinking, the splendid social function, it was also under siege. There the culprit wasn’t the short-and-potent Cocktail but rather the long-and-limp Claret Cup and its ilk, early Victorian innovations based on “light” (i.e., unfortified) wines that were then iced, watered, flavored lightly with spirits and garnished like an Easter bonnet. As one etiquette guide dictated in 1887, “Every lady should know how to mix cup, as it is . . . preferable in its effects to the heavier article so common at parties—punch.” In England, this one had proved to be the deadlier opponent; by 1850, Claret Cup, Champagne Cup and Badminton (another member of the tribe) were the social drinks of choice. In America, the Cup and Punch would both yield to the almighty Cocktail.
Punch did survive, after a fashion, but it had to adapt to do so. Labor-intensive techniques had to change, along with rare and exquisite ingredients (rising liquor taxes saw to that—once cognac cost a hundred dollars a gallon rather than ten dollars, Brandy Punch wasn’t quite so attractive). Bottled, canned or frozen juices would eventually replace fresh ones, just as they were doing everywhere, and carbonated soft drinks would stand in for Champagne. By way of compensation, twentieth-century Punch-makers borrowed the fancy garnish from the Cup; if the Punch couldn’t be exquisite, at least it could be pretty. This situation prevailed until the end of the century.
Fortunately, traditional Punch—
real
Punch—is beginning to shake off its slumber and reclaim its kingdom. The Cocktail revolution of recent years has brought with it a renewed commitment to doing things the old-fashioned way, without labor-saving shortcuts or cheeseparing compromises. One by one, classes of drinks have been pulled off the shelf, refurbished, restored and rejuvenated. First it was the Gin Martini, then the Cocktail in general, the Sour, the Fizz, the Julep. Now, it’s Punch’s turn. Walk into one of the new, top-quality bars where the revolution is being propagated, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a shelf of cheerful-looking bowls and a few tables of people ladling themselves into soggy satori. Death & Co., PDT and the Clover Club in New York; the Hawksmoor in London; Ten 01 in Portland, Oregon; Drink in Boston; Rickhouse in San Francisco—the list could go on, each bar with its own clever take on the now-ancient combination of strong and weak, sour, sweet and spicy.
real
Punch—is beginning to shake off its slumber and reclaim its kingdom. The Cocktail revolution of recent years has brought with it a renewed commitment to doing things the old-fashioned way, without labor-saving shortcuts or cheeseparing compromises. One by one, classes of drinks have been pulled off the shelf, refurbished, restored and rejuvenated. First it was the Gin Martini, then the Cocktail in general, the Sour, the Fizz, the Julep. Now, it’s Punch’s turn. Walk into one of the new, top-quality bars where the revolution is being propagated, and there’s a good chance you’ll see a shelf of cheerful-looking bowls and a few tables of people ladling themselves into soggy satori. Death & Co., PDT and the Clover Club in New York; the Hawksmoor in London; Ten 01 in Portland, Oregon; Drink in Boston; Rickhouse in San Francisco—the list could go on, each bar with its own clever take on the now-ancient combination of strong and weak, sour, sweet and spicy.
Tempted as I am to close this volume by rounding up a bunch of formulae from these excellent establishments, I’ll refrain: these days, top mixologists are churning out books like so many Grub Street alchemists, each encapsulating the philosophy, rituals and recipes of his or her bar. So I’ll let the people behind those recipes write them up themselves. Instead, I’ll close with four more or less original recipes of my own, each of which is included here because I have tested it on members of the tippling public many, many times and found it satisfactory—well, okay, not the last one, but that has peculiar reasons of its own.
Sometime back in 2003 or 2004, I took my first crack at writing a history of Punch, for Slow Food USA’s newsletter,
The Snail
. Fortunately, one of the first books I consulted was Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell’s 1886 classic of multicultural lexicography,
Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive.
For that article, as indeed for this book, it proved a peerless source, packed with illustrative historical quotations on—among many other things—Anglo-Indian drinking. It was there I first encountered the quote from the Order Book of the Bombay Government upon which the Bombay Presidency Punch described earlier is based. Lacking any convenient source of arrack, I applied its basic proportions sometimes to brandy, other times to rum and often to a mixture of both, of more brands than I could possibly recall. Over the years, I’ve inflicted the results on pretty much anybody I could lure within reach of a ladle, from the Culinary Historians of New York to the poker-playing foodies who attended the 2006 Foxwoods Food & Wine Festival, with a whole lot of friends and acquaintances in between. I haven’t had a lot of complaints, which testifies to the soundness and flexibility of the East India Company’s Punch-making.
The Snail
. Fortunately, one of the first books I consulted was Henry Yule and Arthur Burnell’s 1886 classic of multicultural lexicography,
Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive.
For that article, as indeed for this book, it proved a peerless source, packed with illustrative historical quotations on—among many other things—Anglo-Indian drinking. It was there I first encountered the quote from the Order Book of the Bombay Government upon which the Bombay Presidency Punch described earlier is based. Lacking any convenient source of arrack, I applied its basic proportions sometimes to brandy, other times to rum and often to a mixture of both, of more brands than I could possibly recall. Over the years, I’ve inflicted the results on pretty much anybody I could lure within reach of a ladle, from the Culinary Historians of New York to the poker-playing foodies who attended the 2006 Foxwoods Food & Wine Festival, with a whole lot of friends and acquaintances in between. I haven’t had a lot of complaints, which testifies to the soundness and flexibility of the East India Company’s Punch-making.
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