spices are one of the canonical five ingredients needed to make punch, along with spirits, citrus juice, sugar, and water. See punch. Of the five, however, they are the only one whose omission does not disqualify the drink from being called punch: without the spirit, it is lemonade; without the citrus, Toddy; without the water, a sour, and without the sugar—without the sugar it is unthinkable. See sour and toddy.
The most important punch spice has always been nutmeg, first attested to in 1653 by the French traveler François De la Boullaye le Gouz (1623–1668?), who found the English in India using it to point up their “Bolleponge,” or “Bowl of Punch.” It remained the early favorite by a long shot, used in Asia and in Europe, in the Caribbean and North America, and on ships at sea. Nonetheless, mace—nutmeg’s protective sibling, as it were—also found early use, as did cloves, cinnamon, rosewater, and even ambergris, alkermes (the vermillion-colored early cordial), and musk.
The eighteenth century saw allspice added to the reserve shelf and tea step to the fore. Punch made with tea is first recorded in 1728 and became common by the 1740s, with green tea originally being preferred. See Tea. By the end of the century, tea had become a staple ingredient and was featured, along with maraschino and curaçao, in Regent’s Punch, considered the acme of punch making on both sides of the Atlantic. See Regent’s Punch. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, tea had rather fallen out of favor as a punch spice, leaving the spice field to various liqueurs and nutmeg. In the twentieth century, even that faded away as punch became an occasional drink at best—except, of course, in tiki bars, which had their own take on things. See tiki.
The revival of interest in the punch maker’s art in the 2010s brought a new perspective to spicing the drink, one derived from the cocktail. Among the things used to provide punch’s fifth element were cocktail bitters, vermouths, aperitifs and digestives, herbal liqueurs, herbal teas, spiced syrups, chile peppers, and too many other things to mention. Among all that creativity, though, there were still a good many punch makers who stuck with the almost four-hundred-year-old tradition of using nutmeg.
Wondrich, David. Punch. New York: Perigee, 2010.
By: David Wondrich