The twenty-five recipes for Milk Punch in my database all contain similar ingredients: milk, rum or brandy, nutmeg, sugar.
For years now I’ve been intending to make one of these recipes for eggnog’s cousin (or rival, depending on who you ask).
It was only this year that I noticed that these punch recipes, with their similar ingredients, fall into two different camps, with wildly different results.
The recipe I chose is one of several that involve the addition of citrus juice and peel. The milk curdles and is strained off, leaving a clarified product. The result is not so much eggnog’s cousin as a distant DNA relative.
I just couldn’t resist the appeal of a process to turn a cloudy mixture of milk, lemons, and liquor into a clear beverage with a long shelf life.
Clarified Milk Punch dates to the 17th century, and appears in some of Maryland’s oldest cookbooks. The two recipes in Mrs. B.C. Howard’s 1873 cookbook “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen” are both entitled “India Milk Punch.” Both end not by boasting about the flavor, but the fact that the punch “will keep for a year or more.”
Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen, 1873
A book of recipes donated by Dr. George Dobbin Brown to the Maryland Center of History and Culture dates to around the same time. It’s Milk Punch recipe is very similar, with the addition of nutmeg. This is the recipe that I followed.
“If the Tomato be as highly medicinal as it has been represented, it may be anticipated that this wine will find favor with the public.” – Milwaukee Sentinal, June 1840
Interspersed with the shrubs, the cherry bounce, eggnog and Fish House Punch in 19th-century Maryland cookbooks are some of the most intriguing and intimidating recipes: for wines and beers.
Brewing was a part of everyday household management, hardly considered any more frivolous than bread. (And the two processes were often intertwined.)
Beer appeared in the first American cookbook, “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons in 1796. Cider was fairly easy to make from fruits like apples and pears. Wine was a little more complicated.
European grapes didn’t always fare so well in America, and the native ones didn’t always make wine that was considered palatable. (Don’t worry – we’ll revisit that topic later this summer…)
In an 1790, the Maryland Gazette reported that a New Jersey man, Joseph Cooper, Esq., could make the elusive “excellent American wine” from honey and cider. Cooper believed that “by using the clean honey instead of the comb… such an improvement might be made as would enable the citizens of the United States to supply themselves with a truly federal and wholesome wine.”
It was the increased availability of sugar in the 1800′s that really fueled a century of creative wine brewing.
According to Waverley Root and Richard De Rochemont in “Eating in America,” “every housewife knew how to make ‘weed wines’ fermented from “any product of field or garden” – dandelion, elderflower, spinach, tomato, mint, “and of course berries.”
“Early American Beverages,” by John Hull Brown reprinted recipes for a staggering variety of wines that could be found in 19th-century America, including apricot, birch, egg, ginger, lemon, sage, turnip and walnut leaf.
Tomatoes were really taking off in popularity around this time. Whether or not colonists or Europeans had previously suspected tomatoes of being poisonous, in the early 1800′s, the opposite was true.
The idea of tomatoes being a panacea is attributed to a Dr. John Cook Bennett, who publicized tomatoes as a cure for dyspepsia, Cholera, and liver problems among other things. Bennett promoted recipes for tomato pickles, sauces, and ketchup. Manufacturers of cure-all pills and tonics capitalized on the craze by peddling tomato extract pills (which may or may not have contained any trace of tomatoes.)
Newspaper advertisements in the 1830s and 1840s offered a variety of brands of tomato pills guaranteed to cure “all diseases of the blood.”
Tomato wine experienced a surge in popularity in tandem with this. The recipe was popularized in the widely circulated “Dr. Chase’s Recipes” publication alongside fruit wines, remedies, animal husbandry and other information. Tomato wine appeared in regional newspapers as well – including the Baltimore Sun in 1856. Some recipes promised to “retain the well-known properties of the fruit.” Others claimed the resulting drink resembled Champagne or Madeira.
In 1865, “The American Agriculturalist” had had enough. In a scathing and humorous editorial, they praised the tomato as food while dismissing the medicinal claims:
“The following precious nonsense is going the rounds of the agricultural and other papers: ’ A good medical authority ascribes to the tomato… important medical qualifications… the tomato is one of the most powerful aperients of the liver and other organs… it is one of the most effective and the least harmful medical agents known… a chemical extract will be obtained from it that will supersede the use of calomel in the cure of diseases”…
This we regard as.. a libel upon our good friend the tomato. No ‘good medical authority’ ever wrote himself down such a stupid as to accuse the tomato-vine of being an apothecary’s shop… Just think of what a condition our livers must be in at the close of tomato season, after being so powerfully ‘aperiented’ to say nothing of the ‘other organs.’ The whole thing savors of the most arrogant quackery.
The tomato extract dodge was tried years ago, and we had “Tomato pills, will cure all ills,” as the quack epidemic for its day. Let no lover of the delicious tomato be deterred from enjoying it for fear of taking anything bearing the slightest resemblance to calomel or any other medicine, but eat as many as he likes without thinking of his liver or the doctor.“ – The American Agriculturist, Volume 24, 1865
In the chapter of “Southern Provisions” about sugar, David Shields discussed the historic variety of American wines. “Since the 1930′s, the superiority of wine made from Vitis Vinifera grapes has been maintained so insistently in culinary circles that the splendors of tomato wine, rhubarb wine, and strawberry wine have been discounted.”
It is true that when word got out about my tomato winemaking venture to friends-of-friends in Napa, eyebrows were raised. I think it’s a little unfair to hold this endeavor as a litmus test to whether tomato wine is worthy of revival. My brewing experience before this was limited to ginger ale, after all.
Furthermore, I’m not the biggest fan of white wine – which is tomato wine’s closest comparison point. I drank a glass and enjoyed it as much as any other white wine. Then I promptly introduced the vinegar mother.
In addition to the lost wines, Shields lamented “we have lost not only the beverages, but a world of early pickles that employed vinegar made from fruit and berry wines.” So it’s not all a lost cause.
There is some tomato wine available on the market today. For that matter, there are tomato pills available on the market today. If you have cholera or liver problems, you should probably just stick to water.
“Christmas comes but once a year, when eggnog takes the place of beer.” – 1918
These days, Christmastime can feel tainted with greed; shopping and spending, forging memories with limited edition Coke cans, thoughtless gifts and waste. There was a time, over a century ago, when things were more simple and pure. Back in those days, before the black friday sales or even department store extravaganzas, the Christmas holidays were more grounded, centered in the true reason for the season… getting #$@%*! up.
Make no mistake – our agrarian ancestors indeed worked their fingers to the bone day in day out for the most of the year. But when winter rolled around, harvests were put up, hogs killed and cured, one of the primary chores to attend to was… partying. Families would travel or host visitors; when possible, food was shared in all directions; spirits were consumed, often to excess. The large quantities called for in old eggnog recipes hearken to a time when a huge batch was made in late November, to serve to guests throughout the season.
This annual cycle remained in the social DNA even as the nature of work changed, and more and more people flocked to cities and manned machines year round (or sat in offices and collected on the work of others.) In this environment, things could get a little… chaotic.
January 1, 1838, Baltimore Sun
Especially in the rough-and-tumble environment of late 1800s Baltimore, the winter holidays correlated with a time of increased accidents, petty crimes, and some not so petty crimes. We’ll get the unpleasantness out of the way and start with the latter – eggnog poisonings.
I found several incidents of murder or drugging by eggnog. The ubiquitous holiday beverage with its potent combination of liquors must have been a most tempting vehicle for sinister motives in December.
More innocuously, eggnog was generally associated with the type of rowdiness that drew the finger-wagging of the temperance movement and the cautioning of elders. In 1890, two Baltimore men, aged 19 and 21, successfully used “egg-nogg” as a defense when they went to trial for stealing a horse and buggy on a lark.
1853
Each year, news editorials appeared, admonishing would-be eggnog hellions to stop the insanity. In 1905 a Baptist reverend took to the pages of the Afro-American to decry the debauchery, firecrackers and revealing clothing associated with Christmas revelry. Many young men, he warned, have their “lives blotted out” on this one day, and many young women “start to hell.”
“The enjoyments of the Christmas festival were accompanied, as usual, with the usual number of accidents, some resulting from the careless use of firearms, whilst others may perhaps be attributed to the too free use of “egg-nogg and apple toddy.” – Baltimore Sun, 1868
During the holiday season, temperance advocates gladly took on the title of “Anti Egg-Nog Movement” when holding meetings.
Still, the popularity of eggnog continued right on up to -and through- Prohibition. In 1921, the Sun declared that “1921 eggnog is properly seasoned with real Jamaica rum, bootlegged at $8 a quart.”
I have over 30 eggnog recipes in my database. Curious to compare differences, I normalized some of the recipes to a 12-egg standard and compared liquor ratios. Findings? The 50’s were a boozy time. The party seems to be in Howard county.
Most Maryland recipes call for a combination of brandy and either rum or bourbon. A few use all of the above. According to “Forgotten Maryland Cocktails”, the combination of liquors such as cognac, Jamaican rum, and Madeira are typical of a “port city” eggnog, which makes sense. Peach brandy was a very popular addition as well.
Some recipes use cream, some use milk, while others use both. Egg whites, no whites, top the nog with beaten whites? To nutmeg or not to nutmeg?
I couldn’t decide which recipe to try. Compromise: all of them. I calculated an average amount of liquors, cream and milk. I decided to wing it with the whites and ultimately left them out. I also opted to leave out ‘unusual’ inclusions such as cloves or evaporated milk. The result is what I’ll call Amalgamated Maryland eggnog.
I’ll end this post with commentary from one of eggnog’s rare printed defenses. In 1910 the Annapolis Capital paper quipped: “With eggs at 42 cents per dozen the Mint Julep Association is glad it does not belong to the Eggnog Clan.” The Baltimore Sun indignantly reprinted the comment with the reply: “Clan, sister? It is a hierarchy, a universal brotherhood, a winged seraband that measures its membership by the millions and counts its kingdoms by the stars.”
Recipe:
12 eggs, separated
3 pints cream
2 pints milk
1.25 pints brandy (peach if you can find it, apple is the likely option)
.5 pints Jamaican rum
.5 pints Bourbon
9 oz sugar (or to taste)
nutmeg (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
Beat eggs until smooth and yellow. Gradually beat in sugar, followed by liquors, vanilla (if using) and finish with milk and cream. Optional: top with beaten egg whites or fold them in last. Top with nutmeg if desired.
Old Maryland cookbooks such as “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland” tend to have a good amount of space dedicated to alcoholic beverages, whether their purpose is social, medicinal, or for further use in the kitchen.
Edwin Tunis Illustration, “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”
For typical servants and housewives, brewing and alcoholic preserving was as essential a part of duties as canning and baking. For the more well-to-do and decadent, cocktails factor in as well (this blog may be the death of me come eggnog season.)
My friends’ backyard tree was brimming with rapidly ripening sour cherries and so we grabbed the nearest “bounce” recipe and got picking.
I had several options: Mrs. B.C. Howard alone has four recipes in “Fifty Years in a Maryland Kitchen.” Plus one for blackberry bounce (I wish I had that many blackberries.)
The Hammond-Harwood House cookbook “Maryland’s Way” has a recipe contributed by Sarah Perry Rodgers who says that “Miss Ridgley” of Baltimore used whiskey and Jamaica rum and that the Ridgley’s “were known for their bounce.”
Even the temperate Elizabeth Ellicott Lea has a recipe for “Cherry Cordial,” for medicinal use such as “female complaints.”
“The addition of ethyl alcohol rather than rum or rye, and the very large quantity of sugar all suggest this medical application. The social drink, made with rum in Maryland and rye in Pennsylvania, was infinitely easier to make and infinitely easier to drink than Lea’s concoction.” – William Woys Weaver, A Quaker Woman’s Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery of Elizabeth Ellicott Lea
I went with a recipe contributed by “Mrs. Wm. Courtland Hart” of Somerset County to “Eat, Drink and Be Merry in Maryland”
It seems that Mrs. William Courtland Hart was Eliza Waters, of the well known Waters family, and an heir to the Beechwood estate in Somerset County, which she passed on to WIlliam Courtland Hart. The property eventually became the local American Legion.
“As the first first lady, Mrs. Washington served Cherry Bounce in the president’s house. Abigail Adams would write to her sister about “Mrs. W’s publick day” party on New Year’s Day, 1790: The two delicacies of the season were “a kind of cake in fashion upon this day call’d New Year’s Cooky. This & Cherry Bounce,” which were the customary treats of the holiday.” – The Wall Street Journal
Martha Washington’s recipe involved using the cherry pits. Some recipes retain the cherry “meat” and then when you remove it later you can use them for other purposes. That may have been a nice frugal idea but we took the easiest path with Mrs. Hart’s recipe using the juice, heavily spiced with the usual suspects of the time, swapping nutmeg for mace. Other recipes bottle the mixture at later points but we bottled it immediately.
I forgot to photograph the brandy bottle but it was the finest middle-of-the-line.
We will crack open these bottles later this summer and figure out what the heck it can be used for. I’m guessing it will involve ice cream..
