Planters Punch

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Planter's punch with typical ingredients

Planter's Punch [ ˈplɑːntəɪz pʌntʃ ] (German about "planter punch ", from English planter = planter, plantation owner and punch = punch) is a name for a Caribbean cocktail made from rum (typically a ripened Jamaican rum), citrus juice, sugar, Water and - depending on the recipe - other ingredients. Because of its size, it is one of the long drinks . There are countless recipes and variants, some of which differ significantly, so that the author and cocktail historian Wayne Curtis sees the Planter's Punch more as a generic name than as an individual cocktail. Contrary to what the term punch suggests, which mainly stands for hot drinks in German, a Planter's Punch is prepared with ice and, like most cocktails, served cold.

history

Punch (German puntsch, later punch ) is a name that has been widespread in North America and Europe since the 17th century for a large number of mixed drinks, so much older than the term “cocktail”, which was first coined around 1800 and originally only included a small group of drinks and it wasn't until the 20th century that it became the generic term for alcoholic mixed drinks (see cocktail ). Today punch is considered to be the “grandfather of such popular cocktail categories as sours and fizzes ”, and cocktails, which were still called fancy drinks in the 1980s, can also be assigned to the punch category. The English word punch could come from India , where “pantsch” ( Hindi पांच pāñč ) means “five” and could stand for the number of ingredients in an original punch , namely first arrak , second citrus fruits or their juice, third (pipe ) sugar, fourth water and fifth tea or spices ( nutmeg was often rubbed over the punch). Seafarers from the British East India Company finally brought the punch to Europe and North America, where it was usually prepared and served in a larger bowl, the punch bowl, for a larger group of guests. Countless variations of the drink quickly emerged, other spirits or even wines were used, fruits or spices were added and the punch was enjoyed either hot or cold. In 1735, Johann Heinrich Zedler translated Punch into “Puntsch” in his large, complete Universal Lexicon of All Sciences and Arts . The ingredients of the "strong drink" were: brandy , water, sugar, bitter orange juice and nutmegs .

However, the name Planter's Punch has only been handed down since the second half of the 19th century, when the punch so popular in the 17th and 18th centuries was already a little out of fashion. The oldest written source for a Planter's Punch is the London weekly Fun :

Nocturnal punch company. Original title: A Midnight Modern Conversation. Painting by William Hogarth , ca.1732.

"Planters Punch! A West Indian Recipe.
A wine-glass with lemon juice fill,
Of sugar the same glass fill twice,
Then rub them together until
The mixture looks smooth, soft, and nice.
Of rum then three wine glassfuls add,
and four of cold water please take. A
Drink then you'll have that's not bad -
At least, so they say in Jamaica. "

"Planters Punch. A recipe from the Caribbean.
Fill a wine glass with lemon juice,
fill the same glass twice with sugar,
then mix both until
the mixture looks smooth, pliable and good-looking.
Then add three wine glasses of rum
and four of cold water.
You will get a drink that is not bad -
at least that's what they say in Jamaica. "

- Fun Magazine. September 4, 1878, p. 102.

The recipe follows a well-known rule of thumb for punch : “One of Sour, Two of Sweet, Three of Strong, Four of Weak” , one part sour (lemon or lime juice), two parts sweet (sugar), three parts strong ( spirit ), four parts of weak (water) ' . However, the mixing ratios were often changed in later recipes. In 1903 the Kansas Star rhymed : "One of sour / One of sweet / Two of strong / And one of weak" , one part sour, one part sweet, two parts strong, one part weak ' , which is the juice of a lime, one Spoons of sugar, two tablespoons of old Jamaican rum and one tablespoon of cold water should be the equivalent. The often quoted recipe from the New York Times from 1908 is closer to the original formula: “Take two of sour (lime let it be) / To one and a half of sweet. / Of Old Jamaica pour three strong, / And add four parts of weak “ , Take two [parts] of sour, namely limes / for one and a half [parts] of sweet / of old Jamaica rum, pour three [parts], / and add four [parts] of the weak ' .

In the late 19th century, the Planter's Punch was nothing more than a "classic" rum punch, as it has probably been prepared and drunk for over 150 years - Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) mentioned in an ode to punch Ritual a punch with Jamaican rum. One such Jamaica rum punch is also included in George Kappeler's Modern American Drinks collection from 1895. It is unclear why the name Planter's Punch gradually became established instead . Various “Planter's Hotels” claimed the origin of the drink for themselves, for example the (now closed) Planter's Hotel in St. Louis, where the well-known bartender Jerry Thomas worked in the mid-19th century , or the Planter's Hotel in Charleston. In fact, Jerry Thomas' mixbooks, which he published several years after working in St. Louis, contain several punch recipes, but no Planter's Punch . There is no evidence of the Charleston history either. The Planter's Punch couldn't have been created until 1879 for advertising purposes for the Myers's Rum , which was first distilled in Jamaica that year , as is often read, after all, the drink was mentioned in the London magazine Fun a year earlier, in 1878 . However, there is a connection: Fred L. Myers advertised his rum with the note that it was particularly suitable for a Planter's Punch, and could thus have contributed to the spread of the drink and its name. The recipe is still printed today on the bottles of the brand, which is now part of the Diageo spirits multinational . As the “Old Plantation Formula”, it has always corresponded to the classic mixing ratio of a rum punch : 1 part lime juice, 2 parts sugar, 3 parts rum and 4 parts water. According to Myers, there is also an American Formula with the composition “1 sweet, 2 sour, 3 weak, 4 strong”.

A few years later, countless variants of the Planter's Punch were already circulating , including many with other ingredients such as grenadine , grapefruit juice , orange juice , pineapple juice , sometimes even other spirits and liqueurs - ingredients that are also used in other rum-based tiki, which have been popular since the 1930s -Cocktails were used. The combination with juices and syrups made the once strong, aromatic punch fruity, softer and more pleasing and even made it onto Esquire magazine's list of “Ten Best Cocktails” in 1934 - shortly after the end of alcohol prohibition in the United States . Even then, there was no standard recipe: In The Gentleman's Companion, the legendary cocktail book by the well-traveled author Charles Henry Baker, Jr., published in 1939, this one counts alongside the classic punch formula ("one-two-three-four") nine more recipes for Planter's Punch , some of which differed significantly.

preparation

Planter's Punch with ingredients from a modern recipe (see IBA recipe) with juices and pomegranate syrup or grenadine . Optionally, a little nutmeg can be rubbed over the drink at the end .

Today the Planter's Punch is usually mixed as a single drink, but the quantities given in the recipes can be extrapolated for a punch bowl. In this case, there is no shaking in the cocktail shaker , instead ingredients and ice, preferably large ice balls or blocks, are placed in a punch bowl, left to steep or watered down sufficiently and served from a ladle in small punch glasses.

In the specialist literature, the recipes for Planter's Punch differ significantly from one another, there is no generally recognized standard recipe . Roughly a distinction can be made between recipes that are more based on the classic punch formula and only use Jamaica - rum , lime or lemon juice , sugar or sugar syrup , water or soda and possibly spices such as nutmeg or cocktail bitters , and those that use which expand the drink with other ingredients, especially juices and syrups.

In addition to the recipes mentioned in the previous section, the first group also includes that of David Embury, who wrote the influential cocktail book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks in 1948 . He put 3 parts of ripened Jamaica rum, 2 parts of lemon juice, 1 part of sugar syrup, 2 dashes (spritzes) of Angostura bitters into a cocktail shaker , filled up with crushed ice, shook everything vigorously, and poured the shaker ice into it A long drink glass filled with crushed ice , filled with soda water , decorated with fruit and served with a drinking straw . The recipe - with lime juice - is also mentioned in the standard work Cocktailian and is contained in the Diffordsguide with exact quantities : 4.5 cl (matured) Jamaica rum, 3 cl freshly squeezed lime juice, 1.5 cl sugar syrup (2: 1), 3 Dashes Angosturabitter, 6 cl soda water ( Cocktailian : 2–3 cl), with Difford using fresh ice in the guest glass.

The second group includes the version of Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. aka Trader Vic, a well-known exponent of Tiki fashion, who founded the bar and restaurant chain Trader Vic’s in the 1930s and 1940s . For your Planter's Punch you shake 9 cl Jamaica rum, 3 cl lime juice, 1.5 cl grenadine , 1 cl sugar syrup (2: 1) with ice cubes in a cocktail shaker , strain into a highball or long drink glass and fill with 2– 3 cl of soda water.

The International Bartenders Association (IBA), an international professional association for bartenders , has opted for an even more fruity variant and has the following Planter's Punch recipe in their list of official IBA cocktails: 4.5 cl brown (matured) rum , 3.5 cl freshly squeezed orange juice , 3.5 cl fresh pineapple juice, 2 cl freshly squeezed lemon juice , 1 cl grenadine and 1 cl sugar syrup are shaken with ice in a cocktail shaker, strained into a large glass on fresh ice, 3–4 dashes (splash ) Angostura on top and decorated with a cocktail cherry and pineapple piece.

“If rum is the archetypal New World Drink — protean, varied, inconsistent — planter's punch is its cocktail equivalent. Try inventing one yourself. Start with something basic — one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. Then adapt it […]. Try exotic fruit or maybe some bitters. It doesn't really matter what you do. Planter's Punch can be constantly reinvented. It's owned by whoever wants to claim it. "

“If rum is the archetypal spirit of the New World - easily changeable, flexible, inconsistent - then Planter's Punch is its equivalent as a cocktail. Make one up yourself. Start with a base, one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. Then change it […]. Try exotic fruits, maybe bitters . It doesn't really matter what you do. You can always reinvent a Planter's Punch. It belongs to whoever claims it. "

- Wayne Curtis : And a bottle of rum. (2006), p. 312

literature

  • Wayne Curtis: and a Bottle of Rum. A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. Crown Publ., New York 2006, ISBN 1-4000-5167-3 , pp. 114-132 (popular scientific English-language work on the history of rum, here Chapter 5: "Planter's Punch").

Web links

Commons : Planter's Punch  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikibooks: Planter's Punch  - learning and teaching materials

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ As with many international cocktails, the English term is almost exclusively used in German-speaking countries, e.g. B. on bar cards or in specialist literature.
  2. ^ A b c d Wayne Curtis: and a Bottle of Rum. A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. Crown Publ., New York 2006, ISBN 1-4000-5167-3 .
  3. ↑ a b c Helmut Adam, Jens Hasenbein, Bastian Heuser: Cocktailian. The manual of the bar. Tre Torri, Wiesbaden 2010, ISBN 978-3-941641-41-9 .
  4. ↑ Puntsch, Punch. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 29, Leipzig 1741, column 1627.
  5. ↑ In English drink recipes of the Victorian era, the unit of measurement "wine glass" denotes a quantity of 2 imp. Fl. Oz. , rounded up about 6 cl .
  6. ↑ a b Fun Magazine , September 4, 1878, p. 102] Digital Collections of the University of Florida , accessed on January 4, 2013 (English, translated by user: Mangomix).
  7. ↑ This formula, which is very well known today, has been documented since 1844, cf. also on other “rules of thumb” David Wondrich: Punch. The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. Perigee Book (Penguin Group), New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-399-53616-8 , pp. 93 f. Wondrich himself generally recommends for punches: "One of sour, one of sweet, four of strong and six of weak" (p. 94).
  8. ↑ a b Robert Moss: The fruity rum drink known as Planter's Punch goes way back in time (English). In: Charleston City Paper January 5, 2011, accessed January 4, 2013.
  9. ^ New York Times, 1908 (Curtis does not give an exact date, other sources cite August 18, 1908), quoted from: Wayne Curtis: and a Bottle of Rum. A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails. Crown Publ., New York 2006, ISBN 1-4000-5167-3 , p. 131.
  10. ↑ George J. Kappeler: Modern American Drinks. How to Mix and Serve all Kinds of Cups and Drinks. 1895, OCLC 3284814 , p. 88, or as hot punch p. 71.
  11. ↑ a b c Simon Difford: Diffordsguide Cocktails. The Bartender's Bible. 10th edition. London 2012, ISBN 978-0-9556276-2-0 , p. 381.
  12. ^ A b Salvatore Calabrese: Complete Home Bartender's Guide: 780 Recipes for the Perfect Drink. Sterling Publishing Company 2002, ISBN 0-8069-8511-9 , p. 187 ( excerpt in the Google book search)
  13. ^ A b David A. Embury: The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. Edited reprint of editions from 1948 to 1986, Mud Puddle Books, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-60311-164-5 , p. 313.
  14. ^ Charles H. Baker, Jr .: Jigger, Beaker & Glass: Drinking around the World. Unchanged reprint of The Gentleman's Companion: The exotic Drinking Book (1939 edition) with a foreword added . Derrydale press, Lanham (Maryland) 1992, ISBN 1-58667-050-6 , pp. 111 ff.
  15. ↑ According to David Wondrich, Punsch used to be enjoyed in glasses that were no larger than Shery glasses, cf. Punch. The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl. Perigee Book (Penguin Group), New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-399-53616-8 , pp. Xxi.
  16. ↑ Victor Jules Bergeron: Trader Vic's Book of Food and Drink. 1946, quoted in Cocktailian . See also the version adapted by David Wondrich for Esquire magazine: Planter's Punch Drink Recipe , accessed on January 5, 2012.
  17. ↑ Planter's Punch IBA Official Cocktails, accessed January 5, 2013.
  18. ↑ English original: Wayne Curtis, translated by user: Mangomix .