Mississippi Punch

Flipping through Jerry Thomas's 1862 bartender's guide, one earns a new respect for punches.  They were the workhorse concoction for entertaining groups greater than just a few people, and the variety of recipes in use in the mid 19th century was enormous.  The vast majority, surely, never saw print and were the inventions of unnamed thousands of party hosts throughout this land and the British empire.

Since I'm I, I'll give you a bit of etymology.  Besides our English numbers and their closely-related Germanic counterparts, we're familiar with Grecoitalic numbers (wait for the figure...).  East of the Centum-Satem isogloss, numbers are different:

So, you see, the word for five in northern India and thereabouts is panch.  This is the direct origin of our word punch which, originally, contained five ingredients, namely a spirit, lemon juice, sugar, water, and tea or spices.  The British brought the concept (and the new word) to the rest of the world. Nowadays, we think of punches as beverages, alcoholic or not, with several ingredients, and generally served in a large bowl from which one draws his or her serving.

Enough of that.  Every time I read through Jerry's guide, my eyes fall on the Mississippi Punch, one of his recipes for a single serving of punch.  Why? Well, I suspect it's partially because I have all the ingredients, so I can make it. (Old punches usually have teas, wines, arrack, and other things I don't keep on hand.)  So I finally made it tonight...

2 oz Cognac

1 oz bourbon

1 oz Jamaica rum

1 oz water (remove this ingredient if you use syrup)

1/2 oz lemon juice

1/2 oz confectioners' sugar (substitute 1/2 oz simple syrup)

Shake with ice, and strain into a rocks glass with ice.  Garnish with an orange wheel and fresh berries.

A few words on ingredients: 

You can safely cut the volumes in half for a normal-sized drink--honestly, do you need 4 oz of booze in a single beverage?  Also, since confectioners' sugar isn't as sweet as an equal amount of granulated sugar or syrup, you'll have to up the amount; I tripled it.  Next time, I'll just use equal parts lemon juice and my normal 2:1 simple syrup, as above.

So this is a simple mixed-spirit sour.  It has that classic nice blend of sweetness and tartness that you'd expect, but the combination of spirits imbues a roundness of flavor and mouth-feel that is lacking in, say, a plain whiskey sour.  This punch isn't my favorite; to me, it's not as rich as the beautiful Roman Punch.  But I will definitely make this again.  It's probably replaced the whiskey sour, in my book.