For High Spirits Or Pub Night Trivia?
Mark Peel, chef and owner of LA’s Campanile, visited with KCRW’s Evan Kleiman last year to serve up a tasty bit of knowledge about the world of punches and cocktails (link). He offered some sweet recipes, too.
The simplest distinction between a punch and the cocktail is the type of glass it comes in. If it’s in a communal bowl, it’s punch. And, served up in an individual glass, it’s a cocktail.
The word punch comes from the Hindi word panch meaning five, signifying that there are always five ingredients in a punch–the alcohol, sugar, lemon, water, and tea or spices. Others believe the word may have been derived from puncheon, a cask from which a punch bowl could be made (that, by the way, held 72 gallons!). Traditionally, a party kept going until the bowl was empty (link).
Philadelphia Fishhouse Punch
Serves 51 sweet, ripe peach- washed pitted and sliced
2.5 oz sugar
2 oz lemon juice
2.5 oz brandy
2.5 oz apricot brandy
5 oz Mount Gay Rum
- Mix together peaches, sugar, and lemon juice. Crush and cover, let rest at room temperature for 4 hours
- Add the spirits to the fruit mixture, reseal and rest overnight
- Just before serving, strain through a fine mesh strainer into a punch bowl. Stir in 5 oz mineral water, a thinly sliced lemon and orange and one large ice cube (4 oz)
- Serve with punch cups and ice.
Cocktails are made for individual servings. They are a mixed drink like punches, but usually involving bitters instead of the spices. The nomenclature for cocktails is more sophisticated than for punches. The kind of cocktail depends on the alcohol; margarita (tequila), side car (brandy), or cosmopolitan (citrus flavored vodka), etc (link).
Pancho Victoria
.5 oz lime
.25 oz Oro Blanco grapefruit
10 Kefir lime, ginger syrup
2 oz reposada tequila
½ tsp single malt scotch (smokey) on top
- Combine first four ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice and shake vigorously for 15 seconds. Strain into a cocktail glass
- Gently drizzle the ½ tsp single malt scotch on top of the cocktail
- Drink
I certainly appreciate step number three. Just kidding.
On a related noted, Mark Peel also presents us with an interesting tidbit about the history of the scotch trade. During Queen Victoria’s reign the local whiskey trade was running dry because French brandies were the new thing. Allegedly, the Queen started to imbibe a lot more of the local whiskey, and the populace, wanting to emulate the kingdom customs, began to drink more of it as well. While I haven’t read anything that substantiates the Queen’s role in the whiskey trade, we do know she did, in fact, favor it. According to waitrose.com, the whiskey Royal Lochnagar became the Queen’s favorite and received its Royal Warrant in 1848 after she and Prince Albert toured the distillery (link).
Happy Friday!
April 24, 2009
Tags: alcohol, trivia Posted in: Health
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