Episode 49: the Scorpion Bowl

Serves 4 to 6 people

• 3/4 bottle (19 oz) Puerto Rican Rum

• 1 oz gin

• 1 oz brandy

• 8 oz lemon juice

• 4 oz orange juice

• 4 oz orgeat syrup

• 2 sprigs mint

• 1/4 bottle (13 oz) dry white wine

Combine all ingredients in a a large pitcher or bowl. Mix thoroughly and pour into a wide bowl filled with cracked ice. It’s best to let the ice melt a bit and replenish with more ice just before serving. Garnish with gardenias if possible. Otherwise garnish with fresh mint, edible flowers, and/or citrus wheels. Serve with long straws.

The Scorpion Bowl was invented by Vic Bergeron, one of the two men most famous for popularizing tiki culture, at his restaurant Trader Vic’s in Oakland California. According to Bergeron’s 1946 book “Trader Vic’s Book of Food and Drink”, he was inspired to come up with the Scorpion Bowl after he took a trip to Honolulu in the late 30s and was served a cup of a traditional Hawaiian punch called Scorpion at a Luau. He said it was made with a Hawaiian moonshine called Okolehao, along with handful of other ingredients including orgeat, mint, and a combination of fruit juices. He especially loved the presentation of the drink served in a large communal bowl. Inspired, he returned to his restaurant in Oakland and created his own variation using rum, since he couldn’t get Okolehao in the states.

The only problem with this story is that there was no traditional Hawaiian punch called scorpion and there never was. One historian trying to authenticate Trader Vic’s story dug back through all kinds of bar menus, recipe books, diaries, letters, and travel memoires, and couldn’t find a single mention of it. But just when he was like, oh okay Trader Vic is full of shit, he found a gossip column from 1938 that actually did mention the Scorpion. Not only that, but the column even gave a recipe. However, far from being a traditional Hawaiian drink, it turned out the Scorpion was actually something created by Hawaiian surfers who made their money showing tourists around Honolulu. Much like the famous tiki cocktail it inspired, the Scorpion Vic Bergeron was served in 1938 was a fake made to look Hawaiian specifically with the goal of separating tourists from their money. Whether he was really fooled, or he knew it wasn’t authentic and didn’t care, we’ll never know. What we do know is that he took the idea back to Oakland, tweaked it a bit, and created a tiki classic that’s still served in tiki bars around the globe.

This recipe was published in Oakland in 1946, just as GIs were returning from the South Pacific after WWII, and the whole West Coast was whipped up into a Tiki frenzy fueled by fruity, boozy, tropical cocktails like the Scorpion Bowl. Over the years, Bergeron continued to tweak, simplify, and perfect his recipe. If you order a Scorpion bowl at a bar today, you’ll likely be served a much simpler recipe, published in 1972, with fewer ingredients. This 1946 version originally served 12 people. I scaled it back for to serve 4.

This older version predated the invention of the tiki punch bowls we see in most tiki bars today, and instead would have been served in a large but simple punch bowl with 20” long straws. If you have a modern tiki bowl though, this scaled back version should fit well in it.

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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.

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Episode 40: Fish House Punch

Lemon simple syrup

• ½ cup sugar

• ½ cup hot water

• Peels from 2 lemons (try to avoid white pith)  

Combine ingredients together in a heat safe jar. Cover and let sit for at least several hours before using.

Fish House Punch

• 2 oz brewed black tea, cooled

• 2 oz amber rum

• 1 oz cognac

• ¼ oz peach brandy

• ¾ oz lemon simple syrup

• ¾ oz lemon juice

• Garnish: Freshly grated nutmeg & a lemon wheel

Combine everything in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice. Shake just enough to combine, strain into a glass over ice. Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg and a wheel of lemon.

Punch was almost always served at any festive occasions in Colonial America, and they were often made with rum and usually flavored with some kind of citrus. They were also often diluted with brewed tea to add more flavor that water.

 The Fish House Punch is probably one of the most famous punches in American History. According to David Wondrich, the Philadelphia Fish House Punch “deserves to be protected by law, taught in the schools, and made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July celebration.” It was invented at a private fishing and social club in Philadelphia called the State in Schuylkill Fishing Corporation, popularly known as the Fish House.

We don’t know exactly when it was created, but it was legendary for its flavor and potency. Rumor has it that George Washington even drank some in 1787. He wrote in his diary that he was going to dine at the Fish House Club as an honored guest, and after that his diary remained uncharacteristically blank for the next three days.

This would have been a very fancy drink at the time, because so many of the ingredients were imported. Jamaican rum, French cognac, peach brandy from the south, British black tea, and lemon and nutmeg which were also both quite expensive at the time.

Traditionally a large batch of this punch would be flavored with Oleo-saccharum, an infusion of lemon zest and sugar, but to scale this recipe down to a single serving, we went with a simple syrup infused with lemon peels.

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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.

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.

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Episode 22: National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch

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• 1 to 2 teaspoons sugar *see notes

• ½ oz lemon juice  

• 2 oz Brandy (preferably Cognac)

• 2 oz Catawba wine OR dry rosé wine **see notes

• 1 teaspoon raspberry syrup (recipe below)

• ¼ oz Jamaican rum (optional)

• Garnish: orange, pineapple, fresh berries 

Stir sugar and lemon juice together in a bar glass or rocks glass. 
Add brandy, wine, and raspberry syrup and fill the glass with ice (shaved or crushed preferable) 
Shake well and pour back into glass. 

Top with dark rum and garnish with fruit. Serve with a straw. 

NOTES:
* The original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons, but we found the cocktail far too sweet and much preferred it with only 1 teaspoon after some testing
** The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will be very similar, or you could use any sweet white or rosé wine you like. However, we found this punch was far too sweet and much preferred it made with a dry rosé instead.

Raspberry Syrup

• 2 cups of demerara sugar

• 1 cup of water

• 1 cup raspberries (fresh or frozen)

Stir sugar and water over low heat until sugar has dissolved. Add raspberries stirring until the berries form a pulp. Strain into a jar and refrigerate. Over time, the pectin will rise to the surface and can be skimmed off.

The “National Guard Seventh Regiment Punch”  was probably around before the 1860s but we don’t know the actual origins. We just know that the recipe was published by Jerry Thomas in 1862.

This drink is named after NYC’s seventh regiment, which used to be the only regiment that made up the national guard at one point in history. They were known as a “silk stocking” regiment, meaning they were mostly made up of fancy fifth avenue blue blood types. 

During the civil war they were on their way to go fight at Gettysburg, but NYC’s draft riots broke out and they were called back. Fighting draft rioters in NYC was actually the only combat they ever saw during the entire civil war. 

This is one of the more unique cocktails we’ve ever had. The original recipe called for a very sweet wine made from Catawba grapes. If you can’t find Catawba wine, Niagara or Concord grape wine will have a very similar flavor, but you could use any sweet white or rosé wine that you like. However, we found this punch to be far too sweet for modern tastes, and much preferred it when we tried a version made with a dry rosé instead. A later reprint of Thomas’ book called for Sherry. 

Catawba grapes are a hybrid of wild grapes native to the East Coast crossed with European wine grapes. Catawba wine can be a bit hard to find today, but 200 years ago it was everywhere in the US. In fact, Jerry Thomas’ book actually has several recipes that feature it. The flavor of Catawba wine is sweet and distinctly grape-y, tasting more like Concord grape juice than wine. Posh wine snobs refer to this flavor as “foxy” and say that it also has a wild, musky, animal smell, but we just tasted juice box.

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Episode 14: Benjamin Franklin's Milk Punch

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• 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.

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!

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Episode 7 - (individual) Gin Punch

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• 1 lemon peel

• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

• 1 ounce lemon juice

• 1 oz cointreau or orange liqueur 

• 1 1/2 oz gin (old tom style preferable)

• Seltzer water

In the bottom of a collins glass, muddle the sugar and lemon juice to release the lemon oils into the sugar. Add lemon juice and stir to try to melt sugar. If you have time, let this mixture sit for a few minutes to dissolve further. Add cointreau, and gin and fill glass with ice. Top off with Seltzer water, & stir to combine. 

Interesting fact: This recipe was adapted for individual servings, but the original Punch recipe dates back to around the Victorian era. It tastes a bit like the Tom Collins that we all know today.

The recipe calls for seltzer, which I assumed was a modern creation, but was actually invented in 1767! Who knew?

This recipe also calls for Old Tom Gin, which is a sweeter, less-botanical style of gin than the more common London Dry style we know today. It was the lynchpin of countless classic cocktails, and was the go-to spirit for mixologists in the 1800s. It largely disappeared thanks to prohibition, but has lately been making a comeback.

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