It all started with tea! No joke, but read between the 'punch' lines: Searching for a lost bowl and origins of a favorite party drink!

Searching for lost bowl and origins of punch

 

The history of punch is interesting. The history of finding my mother's missing mid-century punch bowl is almost as interesting.  I'm sharing both stories in a two-part blog series -  or, dare I say, serving up a one-two punch? 

First in the series: the origins of punch. There are a few theories, but the one I subscribe to, and to no one's surprise, includes tea.  In Food Network's, Good Eats (Season 13, Episode 6), "Feeling Punchy" host, Alton Brown, explains that punch was introduced to the English via India when Britain established the East India Trading Company in the early 17th century.   British sailors were tasked with bringing back exotic imports which, in a roundabout way, included punch.

Some claim, like Alton Brown, that "punch" comes from the hindu word for five, which stood for the number of ingredients in the traditional community beverage:  sweet (sugar), sour (juice from lime or lemon), alcohol, water and tea (some sources, such as  Difford's Guide and Wikipedia include "tea" with "spice" or just leave it at "spice").

"Punch" may have come from the hindu word for five,  the number of ingredients in the drink

There's another theory that the term "punch" could have derived from the barrels that the sailors used to serve the drink in.  The author of the book, "Punch", David Wondrich, has more faith in the latter explanation. Quoted in Difford's Guide, Wondrich reasons that the  cask-type storage, referred to as a puncheon, would make more sense as punch ingredients were not always limited to five, but sometimes six and other times four.

No matter how many ingredients  were included, the main thrust of adapting such a drink was not due to the sailor's desire to one day see punch served in elegant bowls and grace the tables of the well-to-do, but rather as way to keep up their alcohol inventory. Once the beer and wine ran out, creative sailors turned to what was available: spirits! They were widely available in east and south Asia and the English crews would add sweet and sour ingredients to liquor such as arrack (a distilled alcohol drink from India made from coconut), then, dilute it with water to concoct what Wondrich refers to as an "artificial wine". It had a long shelf life and proved to be popular with the folks back home as English sailors brought the surplus to share with friends and family.

Punch:  a favorite drink of many including Austen and Dickens

Although the crews on the East India Trading Company ships may not have envisioned punch becoming a desired drink of the elite, it did indeed become a favorite of  such notable folks as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and, in an odd twist of history, it was the celebratory  beverage of the Founding Fathers and their friends after the Declaration of Independence was signed (a reported 76 bowls!).

Punch's popularity has waxed and waned over the centuries, taking a hit during Victorian times, when moderation was more in fashion (although Dickens seemed to do okay), to a surge in my own personal history from the "college years" derivations of bottles of juice and rum mixed together in big coolers, where neither fancy vessel nor discriminating taste was required, to further back still, when I was a young girl, admiring my mother's punch bowl filled with fanciful delights.

Which brings me to the tale of the lost punch bowl. . . 

Stay tuned for our next in the Punch series:  "Packing a punch: Finding the Norse bowl close to home".