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.
According to Wikipedia, the word for punch comes from the sanskrit word for “five.” The drink was once made up of five components: water, citrus, alcohol, sugar, and “spice”. According to punch historian David Wondrich, the spice in question could be anything from “nutmeg or tea to ambergris.” (Hey that rhymes!)
The flavors of this traditional punch became a favorite of sailors and traders of the East India Company in the early 1600s. In 1655, the English captured Jamaica from the Spanish. Jamaican Rum became the next spoil of colonialism to make its way into punch.
Bomberger got the recipe from Otho Holland Williams Hunter, the great-great nephew of Otho Holland Williams.
Williams had served in the Continental Army during the Revolution, in command of the 6th Maryland Regiment of the “Maryland Line” from which our state nickname derives. After the war, he lived in a large estate in Williamsport (“Williams’ Port”), Springfield Farm.
The Springfield Farm property contained several outbuildings, including a spring house said to be built by Thomas Cresap, and a ‘still house’ where rye whiskey was aged. According to “Williamsport,” by Mary H. Rubin, that rye was a major source of income for the county.
Williams made efforts to convince his friend George Washington to locate the capital of our young nation in Williamsport, Maryland – and Washington strongly considered it. Washington was championing a canal to connect the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio Rivers, to better commence trade along the Potomac River through the mountains. It wasn’t until 1835 that the C & O Canal that Washington had envisioned made its way to Williamsport, and town became the second-largest town in Washington County.
Otho Holland Williams died in 1794, leaving the Springfield Farm estate to his brother before it then passed on to Otho’s own son Edward Greene Williams around 1810. Edward was the party guy so I like to think this punch is associated with him. He was known for his lavish entertainment at Springfield Farm, and frequently hosted the well-to-do from Washington. Betsy Patterson Bonaparte is said to have made a visit. MAYBE SHE DRANK THIS PUNCH.
At any rate, the recipe came into the hands of Otho Holland Williams Hunter. For all we know, he got it from one of his coworkers at C & P Telephone. Maybe he got it from his wife, Bettie Barber Bruin Hunter, daughter of a banker who raised money to preserve the Washington Monument. No, not that one…. Not that one either. The Washington Monument of Boonesboro – the first *completed* Washington Monument.
Whatever its origin, this is a punch fit for the holidays. I wasn’t aware of the rye made at the still house until after I had already made the recipe and so I had used Irish Whiskey, which is commonly called for in tea punch recipes. I also cut the sugar in half because… yikes. Many recipes call for crushed ice but since this one specified an ice block I took the opportunity to make this molded ice block that came out looking like some kind of shrimp aspic. Fashionable Betsy Patterson Bonaparte would not be impressed.
Recipe:
3 Pints whiskey
1 Pint rum
1 teacup green tea
24 lemons
4 Lbs sugar
2 Quarts water
oranges, pineapples, maraschino cherries, Curaçao
Three pints of whisky, 1 pint of rum, 1 large tea cupful of green tea, 2 dozen lemons, 4 pounds sugar, 2 quarts of boiling water. Pour water on tea and let it steep for a short time. Squeeze lemons over the sugar. Peel very thinly 18 lemons and pour the boiling hot tea over the peels. Let it stand 5 minutes, then strain and pour tea over sugar and lemon juice. When sugar is entirely dissolved add whisky and rum and strain again. When ready to use add oranges, pineapples (cut in dice shape), Maraschino cherries, or any other fruit you may like. Some persons like curocoa in it also. Put this punch mixture in the punch bowl with a large lump of ice. This quantity will serve twenty-five people.
According to cocktail historian David Wondrich in his book “Imbibe!”, Fish House Punch should be “made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July.” If the punch’s provenance is indeed as historic as people claim it is, then it may well deserve priority over cans of beer that say “America” on them. And with a tart dose of citrus plus the requisite gigantic cube of ice, it’s certainly a refreshing Summer concoction.
Fish House Punch is said to have originated with the “State in Schuylkill”, a Philadelphia rod and gun club founded in 1732. Legends have it that it was served in a bowl large enough to baptize a baby in.
I was skeptical of this origin story at first, with the prohibitive cost of citrus. But this was an illustrious club that through the years hosted no less than George Washington, Marquis de Lafayette and Chester Arthur. According to Wondrich’s other book “Punch,” punch containing citrus and rum was a pricy status drink by the late seventeenth century. Fish House Punch began to make even more sense when I thought of the drink as a way to preserve the lemon juice itself – some recipes call for aging the punch a year or more.
Citrus got a boost in affordability and availability in the 1800s, first with the U.S. acquisition of formerly Spanish territories, and then with the building of railways to distribute fruit to cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Recipes for Fish House Punch began to appear in regional papers in the 1860s.
In 1898, the Baltimore Sun praised the selection of beverage recipes found in Mrs. Charles Marshall’s Confederate relief benefit cookbook “Recipes Old and New.” The Sun informed readers that in the book they would find recipes for eggnog, cherry bounce, Confederate punch, Roman Punch, and the “difficult to obtain” formula for Philadelphia Fish House Punch.
Single serving Fish House Punch, Afro-American,1939
That Philadelphia Fish House Punch recipe, contributed by Philadelphian Mrs. George Dallas Dixon, contains some unusual inclusions including green tea and red Curaçao. It is nearly the oldest Fish House Punch recipe published in a Maryland cookbook – but not quite. The 1897 “Up-To-Date Cookbook of Tested Recipes” from Montgomery County contains a more traditional recipe contributed by Mrs. J. Maury Dove. Her husband was a coal company president who had done business in Philadelphia so they too may have acquired the recipe directly.
The recipe I ultimately used, from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland,” comes from Mrs. Charles H. Tilghman of Gross Coate. (More on Gross Coate in the stewed mushrooms recipe.)
This recipe is nearly identical to the one printed in “Imbibe!”, which originated from a Philadelphia lawyer and “must be considered authentic,” according to Wondrich. It is considered customary to serve this punch with one large ice block. I didn’t have the foresight to freeze a big hunk of ice, but I wasn’t even serving the punch out of a bowl, so I used store-bought ice.
The punch came out very sweet – I would recommend cutting the sugar by half or more – and the lack of real peach brandy prevents us from truly channeling the 18th-century “club man” vibe. Luckily the phony peach flavor of modern peach brandy kind of works here.
This Independence Day I may just have a glass or two of Fish House Punch before moving on to those beers.
Recipe:
2 pints lemon juice
.5 Pint Jamaican rum
.5 Pint brandy
.5 Pint peach brandy
2 Lb sugar
4.5 Pint water, including ice
Recipe adapted from “Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland”
This cocktail comes courtesy of Helen Cassin Kinkaid (née Helen Sherburne Ross), descendant of Revolutionary War Major John Samuel Sherburne.
She met Thomas Cassin Kinkaid while he was an ensign at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and they were eventually married. According to Wikipedia: “Their marriage produced no children. They enjoyed playing contract bridge and golf, and Helen was the women’s golf champion for the District of Columbia in 1921 and 1922.” Kinkaid went on to be an admiral during World War II. I don’t really understand war but the Wikipedia entry about Mr. Kinkaid is quite extensive if you want to know more.
Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph
For those not in the know: “claret” is Bordeaux. The original recipe called for ½ pint of Jamaica Rum but I went full pint. It also specified a “gill” of maraschino. That is a half-cup.
I’m not sure why this is called Valentines Claret Punch. I did find this reference to claret punch in “Puck’s Annual” almanac from 1880:
I say go forth, make this punch and drink away the irritation that Valentine’s Day begets.
Recipe:
1 quart tea
½ lb sugar
1 cup Jamaica Rum
1 quart Claret
¼ cup Maraschino
juice of 3 lemons
juice of 3 oranges
Strain all ingredients and serve with ice. “Liquors can be increased.”
Adapted from Maryland’s Way, “Helen Cassin Kinkaid’s Book, Hanover Street”
