Imbibe! (13 page)

The Seventh Regiment was
the
National Guard—before that title was applied to all the states’ militias, it was applied to New York State’s, and before that only the Seventh was entitled to it. If there’s such a thing as a white-shoe regiment, the Seventh was it—or rather, a “Silk Stocking Regiment,” as it was known. With a roster that was virtually cut and pasted from the Social Register, it was the toniest of outfits. And if the only fighting it saw as a unit during the Civil War was in quelling the New York City Draft Riots, for which it was called back while on its way to Gettysburg, the Seventh made up for it by taking on the Hindenburg Line in World War I.

 

 

1 TABLE-SPOONFUL
[2 TSP]
OF SUGAR
THE JUICE OF ¼
[½ OZ]
OF A LEMON
1 WINE-GLASS
[2 OZ]
OF BRANDY
1 WINE-GLASS
[2 OZ]
OF CATAWBA WINE
FLAVOR WITH
[1 TSP]
RASPBERRY SYRUP

SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862

Where the Seventh was Fifth Avenue, the Fighting Sixty-Ninth (a nickname given to it by Robert E. Lee) was the old East Side. Irish, Catholic, rough and tumble, Democratic, it was everything its rival wasn’t, and vice versa. It fought just as hard, though, if not harder. Repeatedly cut to pieces at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, it nonetheless fought through until Appomattox. The unit is still around and still fighting hard, having lost nineteen members to date in Iraq.

The Sixty-Ninth’s Punch, homely but stalwart, stands in the same relation to the Seventh’s that the Fighting Irish did to the National Guard.

The Punch combines Scotch and Irish whiskies, which is rather puzzling, what with the Scots being largely Protestant—not entirely, though, and if you use a malt from the Western Highlands, which are still in part Catholic, you might just be able to squeak by.

 

½ WINE-GLASS
[1 OZ]
OF IRISH WHISKEY
½ WINE-GLASS
[1 OZ]
OF SCOTCH WHISKY
1 TEA-SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
1 PIECE OF LEMON
2 WINE-GLASSES
[4 OZ]
OF HOT WATER

 

 

SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862

The nineteenth century may have lacked Ambien, but it had this.

 

 

1 TABLE-SPOONFUL OF FINE WHITE SUGAR
1 WINE-GLASS
[2 OZ]
OF COGNAC BRANDY
½ WINE-GLASS
[1 OZ]
OF SANTA CRUZ RUM

 

 

 

Fill with
[hot]
milk,
[stir]
the ingredients well together, and grate a little nutmeg on top.

SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862 (COMPOSITE)

Fish-House Punch is thrice blessed. Its name is memorable and strangely alluring, its history is august and eccentric, and its formula is delicious and deadly. The greatest of all American Punches, it deserves to be protected by law, taught in the schools, and made a mandatory part of every Fourth of July celebration, with dilute portions given to those not yet of legal age, so that they may be accustomed to the taste.

The eighteenth-century Englishman was an extremely clubbable fellow. He formed regular social associations at the drop of a tricorn hat. Many were rather informal affairs, a few friends meeting at a set time and place to push the port around a bit and drain a bowl or two of Punch, preferably with a roast to keep body and soul together. Others were a little more eccentric. Take the Colony of Schuylkill, a rod and gun club founded by thirty of William Penn’s followers on the banks of the Schuylkill in 1732, when Americans were still English. First off, they claimed that their little acre of land was an independent colony of its own, complete with governor, secretary of state, assembly, code of laws, coroner, and sheriff. After the War of Independence, they changed their name—along with everyone else—from colony to state. As the State
in
Schuylkill (exactly why they changed “of ” to “in” I’ve never quite been able to grasp), they persisted through thick and thin, moving their simple wooden fishing-house (the “Castle”) once or twice when civilization encroached, giving up the hunting when the woods got too crowded to have bullets flying through them and the fishing when the refuse from the gas-works upstream killed the river. But no matter; every other Wednesday from May to October, year in and year out for more than two hundred years the twenty-five “citizens” and five “apprentices,” or citizens-in-training, would gather to execute the club’s business. For all I know, they may be there still.

That “business”? Eating and drinking and precious little else. But what set the State in Schuylkill apart from other rich-people’s clubs is that its “citizens” traditionally did all the work. There was no staff to do the marketing, sweep out the Castle, gut the fish (the Coroner did that), build the fire, plank the shad, truss the pig, grill the steaks, or brew the Punch. All pitched in, each according to his abilities, the citizens instructing the apprentices. And when guests came (each member was allowed one), they pitched in, too. In 1825, Marquis de Lafayette turned steaks on the grill. I don’t know what they had George Washington doing when he visited in 1787, but rumor has it that in 1882 Chester Arthur—the only other sitting president to be a guest—donned an apron and shelled peas.

The club’s world-renowned “Fish-House Punch” was traditionally made in a large bowl that did double duty as a baptismal font for the citizens’ infant sons; “its ample space . . . would indeed admit of total immersion,” as one citizen noted. I doubt that there was Punch in it at the time—it was far too precious for such usage, and far too potent. The earliest recipe I have for it comes from Jerry Thomas, who evidently got it in turn from an issue of Frederick S. Cozzens’s
Wine Press
, who got it from Charles Godfrey Leland, a Philadelphia lawyer who was primarily known for his literary endeavors. Since he was also a citizen of the State in Schuylkill, his formula for the stuff—“as delicious as [the famous Punch] of London civic banquets,” as he recalled in his memoirs—must be considered authentic, although alas it can no longer be executed as written. But even in its modern, fallen state, Fish-House Punch lives up to the old verses:

 

 

[FOR QUANTITIES, SEE NOTES ON INGREDIENTS.]
(FROM A RECIPE IN THE POSSESSION OF CHARLES G. LELAND, ESQ.)
1/3 PINT OF LEMON JUICE
¾ POUND OF WHITE SUGAR
1 PINT OF MIXTURE*
2½ PINTS OF COLD WATER

 

 

* TO MAKE THIS MIXTURE, TAKE ¼ PINT OF PEACH BRANDY,½ PINT OF COGNAC BRANDY, AND ¼ PINT OF JAMAICA RUM.

 

SOURCE: JERRY THOMAS, 1862

If the Major James Foster, whom Thomas credits for this famous recipe, is the same as the Colonel James Foster of St. Joseph, Missouri, who came home from the Idaho diggings in 1864 bearing suspiciously accurate tales of vigilante justice—highwaymen hung, banditti bearded in their lairs by concerned citizens, posses winkling desperados out of their lairs with “mounted howitzers”—it adds extra savor to this already plenty savory Punch.

To look at the recipe for Rocky Mountain Punch is to assume that the name is merely honorific, assigned from the comfort of a club chair two thousand miles from Pikes Peak and the rough and ready life of the mines. But that would be a mistake. In all but the most precarious and temporary camps, the supply of fine drink was an item of paramount concern to what was by certain standards an unhealthily large proportion of the population, and items like champagne, Jamaica rum, maraschino liqueur, and lemons were often available when things like vegetables, eggs, and soap weren’t.

Rocky Mountain Punch retained its popularity as a banquet-drink through the end of the century, both in its native precincts and among the artificial canyons of the urban East.