Washington Winter Show 2019

55 medicine cabinet than dining room. (It was the supposedly healthy properties of juniper berries that led the Dutch to add them to distilled alcohol to create genever, precursor to modern gin.) By the later 17th century, though, recreational rather than medicinal drinking was accounting for the increasing amounts of brandy and gin consumed in English- speaking countries. It was into this receptive environment that the new exotic and intoxicating beverage was introduced, and by the 1680s punch had fully arrived in England as well as its American colonies. What Was in Punch? One sour and two sweet, three strong and four weak This traditional rhyme, which has almost as many variations as there are punch recipes, outlines the ingredients and one set of proportions for the beverage. One part sour, the juice of lemons and oranges, was complemented by two parts sweet, or sugar to be dissolved in it. Three parts strong, the liquor, was added, then mellowed with four parts weak, the water or water and ice (Americans, even back then, liked to ice their drinks). The spice, being always added “to taste,” was understood in the equation. For the traders of Southeast Asia, punch was a regional tipple, with locally sourced ingredients to make a foodie weep. The area furnished the spices, citrus, and sugar, strengthened with “arrack,” a catch-all term for eastern distilled liquors. In Batavia, arrack was distilled from rice and sugar, while another kind was made in Goa from “toddy,” the juice of cocoa or palm. On the other side of the world, punch became popular not just for its kick and taste, but because of its ostentation. Four of the five components had to be imported, involving great time and expense. Spices, primarily nutmeg, traveled the farthest, a four- to six-month sailing voyage from the Spice Islands of modern Indonesia and cost almost their weight in gold. The islands were held exclusively by the Dutch East India Company except for one holdout, Rhun, controlled by the British until 1667; that year they traded it for Manhattan. For England and America sugar came from the West Indies, particularly Barbados and Jamaica. It was so valuable that many great 18th-century English fortunes would be based on it, including those of William Beckford Tin-glazed earthenware (Delft) punch bowls seem to have been most common in early America, from England and from Holland, like this 10-inch diameter example. Dutch Delft blue-and-white punch bowl, early to mid 18th century, from the Collection of Irvin & Anita Schorsch: Hidden Glen Farms. Sotheby’s image.