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 41: Ward Eight

• 2 ounces rye whiskey

• 1/2 ounce lemon juice, freshly squeezed

• 1/2 ounce orange juice, freshly squeezed

• 1/2 ounce (real) grenadine *see note

• Garnish: maraschino cherries and an orange slice

Add the rye whiskey, lemon and orange juices and grenadine to a shaker with ice and shake until well-chilled. Strain into a tall glass with ice and garnish with cherries and an orange slice

*note: Real pomegranate-based grenadine has a much nicer flavor than the bright red sugar syrup from the supermarket.

The origin stories for many historic cocktails can be sometimes be difficult to trace or confirm, but the Ward Eight isn’t one of those cocktails.

The Ward Eight is one of, if not the, most popular cocktail ever created in Boston, Massachusetts. It was conceived in 1898 at the Locke-Ober Café to celebrate the election of Martin M. Lomasney to the state legislature. Lomasney was a politician who wielded considerable power in Boston for 40 years, serving as a state senator and representative, as well as a political “boss” in the city’s eighth ward (hence the name). Some stories point out that it’s odd that Lomasney was so sure of he’d win before election day that he had the bar create a new cocktail just for his victory party. Rumor has it he had fixed the election.

We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that the Ward Eight is essentially just a riff on a rye Whiskey Sour sans egg white. You substitute some of the lemon juice for orange juice and swap out the simple syrup for grenadine.

While we do know when and where this cocktail was invented, the recipe itself wasn’t actually written down at the time, so the exact recipe is disputed and there are some variations on it. The most popular recipe is a mix of rye whiskey, lemon and orange juices, and grenadine. Most recipes out there seem to be very similar but some omit the orange juice.

Many modern bartenders today will serve this straight up in a chilled coupe or cocktail glass, but when it was first invented it would have been served over ice in a tall Collins glass.

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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 20: The Whiskey Sour

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Makes 2 cocktails

• 4 oz. Whiskey (I prefer Rye Whiskey)*

• 2 oz. Lemon Juice**

• 1 oz. Simple Syrup**

• 2-3 dashes Aromatic Bitters

• 1 Large Egg White  (1 oz if using pasteurized egg whites)

• Maraschino Cherries for garnish

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker without ice, adding the egg white last. Shake vigorously without ice for about 20 seconds. This is called dry shaking, and it helps to incorporate the egg white without watering down the drink too much.
Add plenty of ice and shake again for 15-20 seconds more. Strain well into coupe glasses. Even if your shaker has a built in strainer, I like to double strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove any shards of ice or egg white.
Garnish each with a cocktail cherry.

*Bourbon is popular for whiskey sours, but I much prefer Rye Whiskey because it’s a bit less sweet and has a slight spiciness that compliments the lemon juice.
** To make simple syrup heat equal parts sugar and water until sugar is completely dissolved. Can be done in the microwave. Cool before use.
You can adjust the ratio of simple syrup and lemon juice in the cocktail to taste if desired.

The whiskey sour has a long history. It was probably developed as a scaled-down, individual version of a traditional citrus and whiskey punch.

Jerry Thomas included a recipe in his book in 1862, but even then the sour was probably a century old or more. His version didn’t include an egg white, but to me, it feels a little too simple without it. At some point people started adding soda to the recipe, but they stopped when they realized shaking the drink flattens the fizz.

The egg white was eventually added because it adds a frothy, creamy mouthfeel that really transforms the cocktail into something special. It goes down smoother and looks nicer in the glass too. We know that adding a raw egg white to a cocktail can make some people nervous, but as long as you’re using fresh, good quality eggs it really is safe for most people. You can also use pasteurized egg whites if you’d feel more comfortable.

After prohibition the whiskey sour waned in popularity for a few decades, but it came back in a big way in the 1950s and 60s. Unfortunately, this was also the era of convenience foods and food-product innovations, and the pre-prohibition era recipe that included fresh lemon juice, sugar, and egg white was replaced with sour mix.

Fortunately, in the late 1990s the craft cocktail movement began, and a vast number of classic cocktail recipes were resurrected. Since then, many bars ditched the sour mix for a recipe much like the one above.

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Episode 18: The Whiskey Highball

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• 2 oz Bourbon or Rye Whiskey

• 4 to 6 oz Soda Water

• Ice

• Lemon garnish (optional)

Fill a highball glass (8-10oz tall narrow glass) with ice. Pour whiskey over ice and top off with soda water. Some recipes insist stirring can squelch the bubbles in the soda, so there’s no need.

Garnish with a lemon wheel, wedge, or curl if desired.

This is probably the simplest and easiest cocktail we’ve ever made on the show, but that doesn’t mean this drink doesn’t have a rich and storied past.

Historian Jessica Norris says that “Most folks agree that the Highball started out as a sparkling brandy cocktail with the English gentry in the 1790s, when Johann Jacob Schweppe had just set up his first soda shop in London.”
Some say a bartender named Patrick Gavin Duffy was likely the one who brought the drink to the U.S. in 1895 in the form of a scotch and soda.

As for the name of this simple classic drink, one origin story claims it came from 19th century English golf club bars, where “ball” meant “whiskey” and “high” referred to the tall glass it was served in.
Other people say it may have come from nineteenth century railroad signals. On American railroads, if a globe or ball was raised up high on a signal post, it meant “clear track ahead” and showed the conductor that the train could pass through without stopping. As dining cars started serving cocktails in tall glasses, they adapted the “high ball” signal and attached it to this classic beverage.

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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 6 - The Old Fashioned

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• 1 sugar cube

• 3 or 4 drops aromatic bitters

• 2 or 3 drops orange bitters (optional)

• Water

• 2 oz rye whiskey

• Orange twist

Place sugar cube in an old fashioned or rocks glass. Add bitters and enough water to moisten cube, then crush with a bar spoon or muddler. Add whiskey, stir to combine, and finish with an orange twist and a large ice cube.

Interesting fact:

When the word “cocktail” was originally coined, it didn’t mean a category of drinks, but was actually referring to a specific mixed drink that we know today as the Old Fashioned.

The recipe first appeared in print in The Balance and Columbian Repository in Hudson, New York in 1806.

“Cock-tail is a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters—it is vulgarly called bittered sling, and is supposed to be an excellent electioneering potion, in as much as it renders the heart stout and bold, at the same time that it fuddles the head. It is said, also to be of great use to a democratic candidate: because a person, having swallowed a glass of it, is ready to swallow any thing else.”

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