It is 4:00 a.m. in a clubroom said to be St. John’s Coffee-house, Shire Lane, London. The candles are burning out on a night consigned to drinking, and the revelers betray every state of drunkenness from rowdiness to stupefaction. In spite of William Hogarth’s admonition in his caption — “Think not to find one meant resemblance there, we lash the Vices but the Persons spare” — people took delight in associating individuals in the print with various reprobates in London society.
St. John's Coffee House
PUNCH
Punch comes from India. On this topic, there is (almost) a general consensus.
Opinions vary, though, as to who actually invented it. Some people maintain that it was a traditional Indian drink, which the English then made their own. Others, on the contrary, believe that it was invented by factors, that is, commission agents of the East India Company in order to better bear the boredom, the loneliness, the overbearing presence of a vast, alien world.
One of the greatest experts on the subject, on the other hand, has put forward the hypothesis that it was first concocted by British sailors in the East.
As far as we know, the word punch first appeared in a letter written by a soldier of the East India Company to a factor of the same Company, in 1632. Soon afterwards, in other letters written by employees of the Company, it is explained that punch is made from 5 main ingredients: water, spirit, citrus fruits, sugar and spices. And to this day this has remained its basic composition.
Punch is a constant presence in the British social life of the XVIII Century. The literature of the time is full of references to it. For instance, Henry Fielding has a prison chaplain say “If we must drink, let us have a Bowl of Punch – a Liquor I rather prefer, as it is nowhere spoken against in Scripture.”
And Ned Ward opined that Punch “if composed of good ingredients, and prepared with true judgment, exceeds all the simple, potable products in the universe”.
It was consumed in great quantities, cold or hot, with any kind of spirits, citrus, spices and whatever else caught the fancy of those making it. And it was drunk at balls and weddings, at parties and every kind of social event.
A group of friends would often gather for a long night of revels around the flowing bowl, as it was called by its devotees. A real culture of Punch developed, which brought together a great number of gentlemen (respectable women were naturally debar red from it), adult and well-off.
This kind of party was immortalized by the great satirist (and much more) William Hogarth in his wonderful “A Modern Midnight Conversation” that illustrates this article.
Soon rum became the spirit most often used in the concoction of Punch and this improved its image greatly.
The point is, Punch was expensive.
In XVIII Century Britain, citrus fruits were not easy to find, they were often rotten and anyway they were always expensive. Just as expensive were spices, among which nutmeg was the most highly valued. And then, Punch had to be prepared every time in great quantity, so as to allow a large group of people attending a social gathering to enjoy it. Eventually the very vessel, the bowl, became more and more elaborately decorated, embellished with precious metals and decorative motifs.
And precisely because it was expensive, Punch was largely consumed by the upper classes.
Rum, which was used to prepare Punch, lost therefore part of its bad reputation as a spirit of low quality, suitable only for soldiers, sailors and people of low class, and started to be appreciated by “ the better sort ”, that is, good society too.
-This article was written by Mr. Marco Pierini, The Rum Historian for "Got Rum?" magazine-