SCENE 1
Formal Party

GUESTS: Party goers
              Old Lady
    Although many American's socio-cultural events are marked with the presence of a cash bar at teetotaling functions—such as church-based wedding receptions and high school dances—the punch bowl serves as watering hole for all. Think of it as, well, quaffable democracy. We're all in it together, and in most cases [taking a deep sniff of the punch that he has sampled], we suffer together. A shame, too. Because once upon a time, 100 years ago or so, when a cocktail was just a pretty feather, punches were the highest expression of the tippling arts. Clubs, secret societies, trade organizations, and especially military regiments had their own secret punch recipes, which often reflected a very kind of complex and global influence. More often than not, they were lethally strong.

OLD LADY: [secretly pours some alcohol in the punch bowl]

    Sadly, punch has lost most of its, well, punch. I mean, sure, college frats still fill trash cans with grain alcohol and Tang, but rarely are the true tenets of punch respected. Well that's right, punch isn't just an invitation to dump stuff into a bowl ...

OL: [hands AB some of the spiked punch]
AB: Oh, thanks.

... in fact, the most complex recipes usually do follow a relatively thick series of ratios [takes a sip, and gags], the purpose of which is to create a pleasing and harmoniously balanced flavor, even when the total alcohol content is quite high.
    Well, I say it's high time to bring punch back to its celebrated place at the head of the table. Proper punching not only prevents this kind of pernicious subterfuge [indicates OL], it helps to preserve a very special brand of ...

[Good Eats theme plays]

SCENE 2
On The High Seas

GUESTS: Sailor #1, Hawkins
              Mr. Van der Veer

    [AB is captain of the ship] On the final day of the year 1600 A.D., a royal charter was issued to a commercial venture, officially titled, The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading Into the East Indies.

AB: [shouting loudly] Chart!
HAWKINS: [brings the chart]

    Now the express mission of this organization was to import spices and goods directly to England from the Indian subcontinent and the surrounding lands, thus sidestepping the mark-ups levied by the many middle men who mined the old spice land routes. Over the next century, the British East Indian Company, or, "The Company," became so powerful that it commanded its own armed forces. Its influence grew so considerable on the subcontinent, that by the time the crown dissolved their charter in 1873, it got complete control of India in the bargain. Funny how that works out.
    Anyway, when company men made return trips to England, they brought with them the exotic makings of punch.

AB: [shouting again] Bring forth the writing slate!
H: [tosses the map into the sea]
AB: [is aghast]
H: [pulls out the chalkboard]
AB: Hurry up!

AB: [shouting] Bring forth the punch bowl!
H: [slowly wheels the board away]
AB: [seeing that the sailor is taking his time] Hard to press good men into service these days, you know.

    Now, let's go the mathematics. Let's say, for the sake of saying, that one part equals one pint, 16 ounces. Keep in mind it could be a gallon, a barrel, a keg, what have you, it is the proportions that matter most, okay.
    All right, first, the sour.

AB: [shouts] Limes! Come on, come on.
H: [brings a small lime tree]
AB: Ah, excellent. Now go juice these for me, my good man. Off you go.

    Now limes, of course, a powerful weapon in the battle against scurvy. In fact, by the 19th century, it was common for lime trees to be kept aboard English ships. A habit which led to sailors of the crown being dubbed "limeys."

H: [returns with a bucket of lime juice]

    Now we're going to need a little bit of chill. We have sailed down into frigid southern waters in order to harvest a bit of ice floe.

AB: [to H] Do invite our guest up, won't you?
H: [hauls up VdV on a rope from the frigid water below, he is obviously frozen]
AB: Ah, Mr. Van der Veer, so good to see you. And look, you brought the ice, wonderful. By the way, I do want to say again, sorry about your ship. Just business, nothing personal, you know.
MR. VAN DER VEER: [Incoherent Dutch]
AB: I'm sorry, my Dutch is pretty, pretty light. I think he said he wants to take another bath, go on down. Oh no, I'm just fine right up here, thank you.

    Now, our fifth element is crucial. Although it has no exact proportion, it is the spice.

H: He who controls the spice, controls the universe.
AB: Hawkins, you really do need to lay off the sci-fi.
H: [to us] The spice must flow.
AB: Stop it.

    The spice that company men speak of when they speak of spice, is, of course, nutmeg, traditionally grated directly into the bowl.

AB: Come men, drink.

    Now, a mighty strong quaff by modern standards, and sweet as well. But, it lives on in a 20th century cocktail known as ...

H: [pointing] Land ho!

    Let's look. Why it's a skinny little spit, I think I'll name it, Long Island.

Batavia Arrack has been produced on Java since the
17th century and is available today on the world wide web.

SCENE 3
Old Tavern

GUESTS: Club patrons

    The punch concept may have been born on the high seas, but once it came ashore, it morphed radically, often at the hands of local clubs, societies, organizations, and military regiments, who frequently met to practice secret handshakes, and drink themselves into oblivion.
    Many mythical punch receipts—that's what they used to call recipes—are indeed named after clubs: there's the Philadelphia Fish House punch, the National Guard Seventh Regiment punch, the infamous Chatham Artillery punch that's lubed Savannah's fierce fighting men since before the Civil War. But my personal favorite regional punch manifestation is the Cape Fear punch, which, not surprisingly, was a long held top secret of one Cape Fear Club, supposedly the oldest gentlemen's club in the south.

AB: [lifts a piece of paper with the recipe, from a patron who is too drunk to notice]

   Now various versions have been leaked to the public over the years, but the real McCoy is, [looking at the receipt] Ooh, wowsy. Well buckle your seatbelts, kids, 'cause when this stuff's in the bowl, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

AB: You have a good sleep.
PATRON: [falls over on the table]

In 1856, San Francisco police allowed only one drink
of Pisco punch in a 24 hour period due to its potency.

SCENE 4
Liquor Store

    Okay, the Cape Fear Punch base is a real doozy, calling for rye whiskey, which is created, in part, from rye grain instead of just corn mash, like, say, bourbon. Jamaican rum, meaning kind of dark, but not spiced. And cognac, a very common punch mixer and a somewhat mythic beverage that deserves a little explanation. Now, all cognacs are brandies, but not all brandies are ... Oh, just watch this.

SCENE 5
The Kitchen

SCENE 6
Liquor Store

    [covering up the brand names of the cognacs in the case] There. No reason getting carried away with brand names. They don't really mean that much when it comes to cognac. However there is a code that's important to understand, okay?

    By the way, aging, for any spirit, is a function of being in contact with the chemicals in wood and air. Once it goes into the bottle, the aging stops, okay? So, just because you have a 10-year-old bottle of scotch and you hold it for 20 years, it doesn't mean you have a 30-year-old scotch. It's still just a 10-year-old scotch.
    Okay, for a punch you know, plain old V.S. will do just fine, and it will cover you, even if the recipe just calls for brandy. But beware, some punch recipes call specifically for apricot or apple brandy, but that will have to wait for another show.

AB: [takes the bottle he has selected] Come!

 
    Classic punches, especially those of English derivation, are pretty heavy on alcohol, so they usually call for an effervescent element to be added at the last minute. It could be just plain old club soda, or sometimes champagne. Now in the case of the Cape Fear Punch, it is both. Going to need a liter of the plain bubbly stuff. And as far as this bubbly stuff goes [pointing to the champagne], I urge you not to spend your hard earned cash on French champagne. Just go with an American sparkling wine, or an Italian prosecco, in, say, the 12-dollar range. Just, if you have an option, reach for the extra dry version. It's going to take two bottles.

SCENE 7
The Kitchen

    [at the cupboard] Old punch recipes, or receipts, often call for mixing the stronger alcoholic components together, days, weeks, or sometimes even months ahead of punch time. You see, back then, spirits were often sold young and unblended. In other words, harsh. Pre-mixing and aging the punch base at home helped to curb the curse.
    [at the dining table] Although this step is not the necessity it was 100 years ago, I still like to build my strong team ahead of time in a gallon glass jar, because having this on hand will make it easier for me to quickly reinforce the punch as the party progresses. Why not just make a huge batch first thing? The fine champagne, of course. Once this bottle is breached, the clock is ticking, the bubbles disappearing forever into the ether. If I want to keep my bowl at its best, I'll actually make up a couple of punches as the night goes on, and this step will make that much, much easier. So will the rubber bands. [shows a couple of rubber hands around the gallon glass jar] We'll get to that in a few minutes.

Besides wine and fruit juice, tea is the most common
"weak" ingredient in classic punch recipes.

SCENE 8
The Kitchen

GUESTS: Sailors #1, #2 & #3
              Crew

SAILORS #1, #2, #3: [struggling with an abacus, trying to figure out the problem]
AB: Don't worry, fellas, don't stretch your brains, I don't like math either.

    All you've got to do is use your rye bottle and fill it halfway with both. [demonstrates] Clearly, a funnel makes this much easier. Move into your base jar and you're almost done. There. So now we have a total of two and a quarter liters, approximately, I don't know, 76 ounces. Now you notice I've got one rubber band at the top. Lets me know when I've kind of hit my limit. I have got another one halfway up. Now this marks the amount that I will use for the first bottle of champagne later on.

    [at the refrigerator] Stash this in your chill chest for anywhere from 24 hours to three months.
    All right, let's talk ice. The last thing you want floating in your punch are these little guys [ice from your freezer]. For one thing, they're not very attractive, and they've got a lot of surface area. That means rapid melting, and that means watery punch. What we need to preserve the flavor of our punch is one single mass of ice, preferably one that has as little surface area as possible. And that means a shape [catches a small water balloon from off-camera] kind of like this.
    [narrating] I'm going to assume most of you are familiar with this procedure. Just stretch open your balloon, put on the faucet, fill with a pint of water (that's a pound, you know), tie it off and then move it to a freezer. I find that a large teacup makes a nice form. There.

Remember, water expands as it freezes so make sure
you give your balloon room to grow.

    After freezing overnight, all you have to do is peel away the balloon material, and I like to give it a rinse to remove any residual powder. Now, if you happen to be allergic to latex, you might want to consider using some other form, like, say, a Bundt pan or a vinyl glove.
    [at the dining table] It is time to build, and to build, we need a bowl. Although I am fond of this small, half gallon antique punch bowl, handed down by my grandmother, its volume, like many of its age, lends itself to more intimate affairs. A serious fete requires a serious bowl, something in the one-gallon range. Now I found this at my local thrift shop where I buy most of my clothes.

    As for the spice, I usually leave a nutmeg and a grater right next to the bowl.
    Now let's see, the average punch cup is four ounces, so that means we've got, I think, 30 servings here, thereabout.

CREW: [descends on the punchbowl, emptying it in a few seconds]

    What just happened here is why Americans don't punch very often. English gentlemen of the past age were more than willing to dedicate a couple of hours to sitting around the bowl, talking with friends, making toasts while getting toasted, sometimes right in the middle of the day. When America got cranked up though, two characteristics became clear. Nineteenth and 20th century Americans don't mind a mid-day drink, but they want it fast. They don't have time for sitting around. And they want choice. You see, as spirit distillation became more polished, the cocktail was born, and everybody wanted what they wanted. So, just as video killed the radio star, the mixed drink killed the punch bowl, and I say we're none the better for its passing. Luckily, we can do something about it.

A punch low in alcohol is technically called a "cup".

SCENE 9
The Kitchen

GUESTS: "Itchy" and "Twitchy"

    In the days before central heat, anything that added warmth to winter was a good thing, including punch. Landlords in Edwardian England were, in fact, expected to prepare hot punches from time to time in order to prevent Jack Frost from nipping his tenants' noses clean off. This fine tradition lives on today in the hot toddy.

    [at the liquor cabinet] Although toddies made in the U.K. can contain almost any liquor, the American version is always built upon scotch whiskey. In fact, until the 20th century, almost all the scotch consumed in the U.S. was taken in toddy form.
    Now the success of a hot toddy really is in the body, the scotch has got to have weight, and that means using a single malt scotch, rather than a blended scotch. That's because single malts are generally distilled in pot stills, like this. [shows diagram] Pot stills crank out spirits which have a heavier body. Blended scotches almost always come from column stills, which are also used to make most American bourbon. Such stills create a lighter, thinner body, which is fine for some drinks, but not for a toddy.

    Well, I hope that we've inspired you to break out the punch bowl or the slow cooker, and try your hand at a beverage whose time has returned, punch. Now, as you might imagine, my attorneys, "Itchy" and "Twitchy", want me to remind you to, uh, oh, enjoy responsibly, and oh, of course, only if you're, um, you know, legal drinking age in your state.

AB: Right, guys?

    Now, if you'll excuse us, I think we'll have a quiet sip of good eats.

AB: Speaking of punch, whoever sold you those robes deserves one.

Transcribed by Michael Roberts
Proofread by Michael Menninger

Last Edited on 08/27/2010