Episode 45: Early Colonial Rum Punch

Makes about Four 5oz servings

  • 1 cup green tea (hot)

  • ¼ cup jaggery or other dark raw sugar (demerara or muscovado)

  • ¼ cup fresh squeezed lime juice

  • 1 cup aged Jamaican or Caribbean rum

  • Fresh grated nutmeg

In a bowl or pitcher, pour tea over sugar and stir to dissolve. If using jaggery, you may need to break it up with a muddler in the liquid to help it dissolve faster. Stir in the lime juice and rum and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Ladle or pour into punch glasses and grate a bit of fresh nutmeg over the top before serving.

Alcoholic Punch was still in its infancy in the 1670s, so recipes from that era are hard to come by. This recipe is not exactly an “authentic” Colonial American punch recipe, but rather a twist on a 1668 recipe shared in David Wondrich’s book, “Punch”. The oldest recipe included, it predates the popularity of oleo saccharum. Instead, it simply calls for lime juice but no zest.

This recipe was written down in England and contains several Indian & Indonesian ingredients that would have been hard to come by in early colonial America, so to try to approximate a punch similar to what might have been consumed in America in the 1670s, some substitutions and tweaks to this recipe were necessary.  

In place of Batavia Arrack, dark Caribbean rum is used instead. A raw sugar called jaggery is used to try to recreate the dark, raw, funky flavor of colonial era loaf sugar. Raw sugars such as demerara, muscovado, or “Sugar in the Raw” could be used in its place.

 For authenticity’s sake, the recipe is not served with ice, but keeping it cold in the refrigerator is fine. The recipe has also been scaled down for a smaller serving size but could easily be scaled back up. For more information, please listen to Minisode 40 on the history of punch.

Episode 34: Apple Toddy

  • Hot water

  • 1 tablespoon sugar

  • ½ baked apple *(see note)

  • 2 oz apple brandy (blended applejack is best)

  • Freshly grated nutmeg

Rinse a mug with hot water to warm it, and dump the water out. Add the sugar, the 1/2 baked apple, and an ounce or two of hot water. Stir to dissolve the sugar and mash up the apple as well as possible. I used an immersion blender to get it really smooth. Add the apple brandy and stir to combine. Top off with more hot water and finish with freshly grated nutmeg.

*Notes:
If you don’t want to bake your own apple you could substitute about 1/3 of a cup of unsweetened apple sauce instead.
To make the baked apple:
Preheat oven to 350. Peel & core a small sweet soft apple, & slice in half. Wrap in a parchment on a sheet pan, or place in a lidded dish, and bake for 30 to 45 minutes until soft.

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In the 1700s, the apple toddy was considered a real treat in cold weather, especially around the holidays. It didn’t matter if you were a poor farmer, a soldier, a politician, or a wealthy landowner; this drink was popular across the social scale. It was also popular for a very long time; from before the revolution all the way up to prohibition. Mentions of the apple toddy appear in print a bunch of times in both the 1700s & 1800s. Unfortunately, like a lot of pre-prohibition classics, it never found its way back after prohibition was repealed, but it’s delicious and definitely deserves a comeback.

One caveat is that the apple needs to be mashed very well so it isn’t chunky in the drink. I’m not sure how they would have done this in the 1700s, but I used an immersion blender to get mine as smooth as possible. Some people recommend straining the drink before serving but I think as long as the apple is very finely blended into the drink, straining isn’t necessary.

Episode 32: General Burnside's Favorite

  • Juice of half a lemon (1/2 oz)

  • 2 oz Brandy (preferably VSOP)

  • 1 oz Jamaican Rum

  • 3/4 oz orgeat syrup (use one made with real almonds and cane syrup)

  • Garnish: Fresh grated nutmeg, and lemon slice if desired

Rinse out a glass mug or punch cup with boiling water to warm it up. Pour the water out and add lemon juice, brandy, rum, and orgeat. Top the mug off with more hot water. The larger the mug you use, the more watered down the drink will be, but this is a strong drink so that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Grate some fresh nutmeg over the top, and serve with a lemon slice if desired.

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During the civil war, soldiers were drinking so much whiskey that over the years the supply ran out and couldn’t be replenished fast enough. Fortunately for the wealthy officers and generals, they could get their hands on fancy imported brandy and rum when the whiskey supply ran low.

One such general was General Ambrose Burnside from Indiana. He was a terrible general famous for 3 things, an army career that included some devastating and embarrassing defeats, facial hair so wild and distinctive that sideburns are literally named after him, and a fancy pants punch recipe he liked sharing so much that in 1863 Jerry Thomas published it with the tagline, “This superb drink was forwarded to me by special messenger from the General.”

This punch recipe is served hot, which may seem odd to us today, but was fairly common at a time before refrigeration and cheap, plentiful ice. In fact, instead of hot water, a lot of punches would have been cut with black or green tea to add flavor.

The recipe includes lemon juice, French brandy, Jamaican rum, orgeat syrup, hot water, & nutmeg, and the flavor is reminiscent of a hot toddy.  This was some fancy shit back then. French brandy and Jamaican rum were expensive and hard to get during the war. Quite a flex. Instead of everyday sugar, he used fancy ass French almond flavored orgeat syrup instead. Nutmeg was also very fancy and showed that you could afford fancy ingredients.

Episode 14: Benjamin Franklin's Milk Punch

  • 3 cups (1.5 pints) of brandy

  • 6 lemons

  • 1 cup lemon juice

  • 2 cups (1 pint) of spring water

  • ½ of a whole nutmeg, freshly grated 

  • 1/2 cup (1/4 lb) of sugar

  • 1.5 cups of whole milk

Zest lemons.
Squeeze 1 cup of lemon juice.
Steep the lemon zest in the brandy for 24 hours.
Strain out the lemon zest.
Add water, freshly grated nutmeg, lemon juice, and sugar to the brandy, and stir until the sugar dissolves.
Slowly bring milk to a boil. As soon as the milk boils, add it hot to the brandy mix and stir.
The heat, lemon juice, and alcohol will begin to curdle the milk.
Let the punch stand for 2 hours.
Strain the punch through a jelly bag or a cheesecloth lined strainer (or a clean pillow case!) until clear. Serve cold.

*Note: The straining process is slow, but resist the urge to change out the jelly bag or cheesecloth. The liquid needs to strain through the curd to clarify properly. I rushed it, which is why mine looks so cloudy in the photo below.

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The idea drinking a punch made from curdled milk may sound kinda weird or gross, but in Colonial America, there were multiple drinks made this way. Along with milk punch, possets and syllabubs were also popular back then.
Possets combined hot milk with ale, wine, or brandy, sugar, and spices. The combination of heat and alcohol curdled the milk, and they were consumed from the spout of a posset cup, which let you drink the whey from the bottom and save the curd to eat later.
Syllabubs combine milk with wine and lemon juice (or other acids); the acid from the wine and the juice curdled the milk, and when served in a glass, the foamy curd of the syllabub was eaten with a spoon first before you drank the punch below.
So don’t let milk punch scare you. It’s tasty we promise!

Episode 13: Colonial Ale Flip

  • 12 oz brown ale *see note

  • 2 oz dark rum (or brandy)

  • 1 oz molasses

  • 1 whole egg

  • grated nutmeg for garnish

Pour the ale into a saucepan and heat over low to medium low heat until warm and steaming, but don’t bring it to a boil.
Meanwhile, in a small pitcher or measuring cup, combine the rum, molasses, and egg and beat vigorously with a fork or whisk until it’s a little frothy looking. Pour the beer into the rum and egg mixture in a slow steady stream, beating with a fork the whole time to prevent the egg from heating too quickly. 
Serve in a large mug (or two smaller mugs) and garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg. 

*note: If you can find English style brown ale or Nut brown ale, it’ll be sweeter and less bitter and hoppy than American style brown ales. This is much more similar to what they would have been drinking 300 years ago. We used a beer called Rouge Hazelnut Brown Nectar with a nutty sweetness that was perfect for this drink if you can find it. If you can only find American brown ale, it’ll be fine but you may want to add a touch more molasses to combat the bitterness of the hops. 

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Flip first appeared sometime in the 1690s, and it was wildly popular in colonial America for the next century. George Washington was said to be a big fan. 

Flip was made in a metal pitcher and whipped until warm and frothy with a red hot fire poker (called a flip-dog). They’d usually be served in ceramic mugs or sometimes in special flip glasses.

Sometimes they were poured back and forth between two mugs to make sure they were creamy and well blended. This pouring back and forth gave Flip the nickname “Yard of Flannel” but they also went by the names “Bellow-Stop”, “Hotch-Pot”, and “Crambambull”.