The Epicure's Almanac or Diary of Good Living
August 21st : OXFORD PUNCH
We have been favoured by a Christ Church man with the following recipe for the concoction of punch, as drunk at the University of Oxford :
Rub the rinds of three fresh lemons with loaf sugar till you have extracted a portion of the juice. Cut the peel finely off two lemons more, and two Seville oranges. Use the juice of ten lemons, and four Seville oranges. Add six glasses of calf's-foot jelly; let all be put in a large jug and stirred well together.
Pour in two quarts of water boiling hot, and set the jug upon the hob for twenty minutes. Strain the liquor through a fine sieve into a large bowl; pour in a bottle of capillaire, half a pint of Sherry, a pint of Cognac brandy, a pint of old Jamaica rum, and a quart of orange shrub; stir well as you pour in the spirit. If you find it requires more sweetness add sugar to your taste.
Such is the beverage of Alma Mater, and doubtless very seductive and delicious drink it is; but if taken too freely, the agony endured in the region of the pia mater would be sufficient, we should imagine, to make a man forswear punch for evermore.
The derivation of the name given to this old fashioned and still popular drink, has occupied the attention of the learned and curious. The Persians call it pancha, a word signifying five, the number of ingredients required in its construction. One sweet, two sour, three and four spirits, five water. We have no right to claim it as an English production, seeing that our own country furnishes but the water.
In Sicily I remember to have heard that a learned padre, who had imbibed a somewhat immoderate quantity over night, declared, whilst suffering from headach the next day, that it must owe its name to Pontius; for, added the priest, shaking his head and looking devoutly penitent, “He was a traitor.”