to take that money. When Captain Fitzgerald saw Willard at the City Hotel, you’ll recall, he was “preparing and issuing forth punch and spirits to strange-looking men.” This suggests a much higher level of activity than the landlord’s leisurely mixing of a bowl of Punch; it’s likely that Willard was making them to order, one glass at a time. That’s certainly how he was doing them later, and that’s also how, before long, everybody else was taking them. The American plan has always been “I want mine now,” and why shouldn’t that apply to Punch as well? In fact, Willard wasn’t even the first: According to the memoirs of the rowdy rambler Big Bill Otter, by 1806 plenty of New York bars were selling Punch by the glass, both large and small. In this chapter, we’ll tackle the Greater Punches, as it were, the ones generally made long and strong.
I. A LARGE GLASS OF PUNCH
By Jerry Thomas’s day, there were a great many formulae for one-shot Punches in circulation (sadly, though, the formula for Willard’s famous Extra Extra Peach Brandy Punch appears to have died with its creator). I present here a generous selection of the most important and, of course, tastiest.
BRANDY PUNCH
The first drink in Jerry Thomas’s book—and indeed quite possibly his first acknowledgment as a bartender: On February 7, 1853, page four of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle carried a set of verses on a newspaper P. T. Barnum had launched, including these lines, satirizing Barnum’s support of Prohibition (which
Brandy Punch. From The Bon Vivant’s Companion , 1862. Note cigars, right. (Author’s collection)
had been enacted in Maine in 1851, with the lax and arbitrary enforcement that usually accompanies such schemes):
In Yankee land, the papers say,
Barnum talks “Maine Law” all day,
But beneath his monster show,
Brandy punch is all the go.
If Thomas and George Earle were still running the Exchange under Barnum’s Museum and Thomas was making the Punch the same way at age twenty-three as he was at age thirty-two when his book came out, small wonder it was all the go. In Thomas’s hands, the individual Brandy Punch is the very epitome of the Fancy Drink; indeed, he felt so strongly about it that one of the book’s few illustrations was devoted to it.
The popularity of Brandy Punch peaked before the Civil War, with the popularity of brandy itself. Postwar, many of the gents who drank it—the ones who survived the shooting, that is—seem to have switched their attention to the Sour, for which see below. A cautionary note, though: Like many of the Professor’s drinks, this one’s not for the novice tippler. It’s a potent drink for long, slow sipping.
(USE LARGE BAR-GLASS.)
1 TABLE-SPOONFUL RASPBERRY SYRUP
2 TABLE-SPOONFULS [2 TSP] WHITE SUGAR
1 WINE-GLASS [2 OZ] WATER
1½ WINE-GLASS [3 OZ] BRANDY
½ SMALL-SIZED LEMON
2 SLICES OF ORANGE
1 PIECE OF PINE-APPLE
Fill the tumbler with shaved ice, shake well, and dress the top with berries in season; sip through a straw.
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: The sugar should be superfine, the brandy cognac, and the berries whatever strikes your fancy. The illustration in Thomas’s book appears to show a raspberry and a strawberry.
Thomas provides three close variations for this: To make this into Curaçoa Punch , substitute that liqueur for the raspberry syrup, replace 1 ounce of the brandy with Jamaica rum and “sip the nectar through a straw.” For West Indian Punch , “add a clove or two of preserved ginger, and a little of the syrup.” For Barbadoes Punch (as Thomas spells it), “add a table-spoonful of guava jelly.” Both are very fine drinks, particularly if you drop the raspberry syrup and increase the sugar to ½-ounce. These two should also be made with 2 ounces of brandy and 1 ounce of rum, with Mount Gay or Cockburn’s in the Barbadoes Punch and pretty much any rum you like in the West
I. A LARGE GLASS OF PUNCH
By Jerry Thomas’s day, there were a great many formulae for one-shot Punches in circulation (sadly, though, the formula for Willard’s famous Extra Extra Peach Brandy Punch appears to have died with its creator). I present here a generous selection of the most important and, of course, tastiest.
BRANDY PUNCH
The first drink in Jerry Thomas’s book—and indeed quite possibly his first acknowledgment as a bartender: On February 7, 1853, page four of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle carried a set of verses on a newspaper P. T. Barnum had launched, including these lines, satirizing Barnum’s support of Prohibition (which
Brandy Punch. From The Bon Vivant’s Companion , 1862. Note cigars, right. (Author’s collection)
had been enacted in Maine in 1851, with the lax and arbitrary enforcement that usually accompanies such schemes):
In Yankee land, the papers say,
Barnum talks “Maine Law” all day,
But beneath his monster show,
Brandy punch is all the go.
If Thomas and George Earle were still running the Exchange under Barnum’s Museum and Thomas was making the Punch the same way at age twenty-three as he was at age thirty-two when his book came out, small wonder it was all the go. In Thomas’s hands, the individual Brandy Punch is the very epitome of the Fancy Drink; indeed, he felt so strongly about it that one of the book’s few illustrations was devoted to it.
The popularity of Brandy Punch peaked before the Civil War, with the popularity of brandy itself. Postwar, many of the gents who drank it—the ones who survived the shooting, that is—seem to have switched their attention to the Sour, for which see below. A cautionary note, though: Like many of the Professor’s drinks, this one’s not for the novice tippler. It’s a potent drink for long, slow sipping.
(USE LARGE BAR-GLASS.)
1 TABLE-SPOONFUL RASPBERRY SYRUP
2 TABLE-SPOONFULS [2 TSP] WHITE SUGAR
1 WINE-GLASS [2 OZ] WATER
1½ WINE-GLASS [3 OZ] BRANDY
½ SMALL-SIZED LEMON
2 SLICES OF ORANGE
1 PIECE OF PINE-APPLE
Fill the tumbler with shaved ice, shake well, and dress the top with berries in season; sip through a straw.
SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862
NOTES ON INGREDIENTS: The sugar should be superfine, the brandy cognac, and the berries whatever strikes your fancy. The illustration in Thomas’s book appears to show a raspberry and a strawberry.
Thomas provides three close variations for this: To make this into Curaçoa Punch , substitute that liqueur for the raspberry syrup, replace 1 ounce of the brandy with Jamaica rum and “sip the nectar through a straw.” For West Indian Punch , “add a clove or two of preserved ginger, and a little of the syrup.” For Barbadoes Punch (as Thomas spells it), “add a table-spoonful of guava jelly.” Both are very fine drinks, particularly if you drop the raspberry syrup and increase the sugar to ½-ounce. These two should also be made with 2 ounces of brandy and 1 ounce of rum, with Mount Gay or Cockburn’s in the Barbadoes Punch and pretty much any rum you like in the West
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