Welcome back, friends - it's Anders.
Today we're making the Charles Dickens Punch.
This is a holiday favorite of mine. It's a warm punch, and it's perfect for the holidays.
It really is because it'Charles Dickens.
The whole "Christmas Carol" - maybe that's a connection I'm making that not everybody will.
But it's an opportunity for us to be fancy, drink something warm, enjoy the finer things in life.
So you are going to need one of these - a dainty teacup, and on of these!
I stole this from the hallway. I'll put it back, but I think it's better to have it nearby
when we're dealing with flames indoors. Be careful with fire. Umm, let's see, what else?
What else?
This episode goes out to my boy Tiny Tim. I just - in the Disney Christmas Carol I always thought,
that poor little character. [sigh]
If you're new to the channel, hit that subscribe button for more sips, tips, and recipes.
And let's go make the Charles Dickens Punch.
To the bar.
[intro music]
Punch is old - I mean really old. It predates cocktails and in fact,
when Charles Dickens was making the stuff in the mid-1800s, it was already kind of passé.
But he loved it, and he loved the culture around it. He would have people over at his house and make punch all the time.
At least in my head. It was only a matter of time before he came up with his own punch -
the Charles Dickens Punch. Which I would imagine he didn't name himself
because if I named a punch the Anders Erickson punch, that's a little conceited.
So I'm guessing somebody else named the punch, but we don't really know who.
But we know about this recipe because he put it in a letter, in 1847, and sent it off to a friend named Mrs. F.
Amelia Austin, and a last name that started with an "F" - that I can't pronounce.
Fil-uh-nou! Fil-uh-nō! I think that's why they called her Mrs. F.
Anyway, this recipe shows up in the book, Punch, by David Wondrich,
and it's because of this book I know about the Charles Dickens Punch.
This punch calls for cognac and rum. And I'm going to be doing a pineapple-infused rum.
This is not an original idea of mine. This is how we used to do it at the bar,
but it also harkens back to Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens apparently loved pineapple rum.
He even created a character called Reverend Stiggins, who I think was just a drunk reverend who loved pineapple rum.
So if Charles Dickens liked it, and an imaginary drunk reverend liked it,
that's good enough for me.
Now you can use pineapple rum in this recipe, but you don't necessarily have to make it from scratch.
If you want, I would highly recommend picking up a bottle of the Plantation Pineapple Rum.
This was created in collaboration with David Wondrich himself,
and David Wondrich - when they were formulating this - had Charles Dickens in mind.
However, I'm going to make my own.
If you want to follow my lead, grab a bottle of your favorite rum. I'm using Smith & Cross, which is a higher proof Jamaican rum.
Then you get a pineapple. Take that top off,
and you can either peel the pineapple, or get a pineapple corer like I have -
which saves a lot of time and struggle.
Then put that into a jar and pour your entire bottle of rum over it. It should cover the pineapple.
Then agitate it a little bit - meaning slosh it around. Kind of shake it up, and set it aside for about a week.
If you want extra flavor, and you have the time, let it rest for two weeks. It's gonna be even better.
When you're ready to use it, filter off all of the pineapple and you're good to go!
Now it's time to make the punch. I've got my handy-dandy induction burner,
but you can use your stove.
We'll need two cups of pineapple rum - homemade or store bought, one cup of cognac, three quarters of a cup of Demerara sugar,
three lemons, and black tea. Oh - you'll also need four cups of water to make the tea.
What we're gonna do first is make something called an oleo-saccharum. Which means oil and sucrose - oil and sugar.
We're gonna take three lemons, and into the pot, peel all three lemons.
Don't turn the heat on yet. Now if you want, you could do this all in one go
to get a nice, long, cool looking twist. I've seen a lot of people do that,
but I find when I do that, I tend to press on the lemon more. So I like doing just straight long strips
because you want as little of the pith as possible. Make your way around the lemon and we will drop
all of those peelings into the pot. And hang on to these lemons because we'll use the juice as well.
That looks pretty good. To this we will add three quarters of a cup of Demerara sugar
to cover all of the lemon peels. Now massage the sugar into the peels, and what's going to happen is
the sugar is going to draw out a lot of those oils, and it's going to give this some depth in flavor, and a nice brightness.
Okay, at this point, it's going to take a little time to really extract all of those oils.
To do this fully, you'd want to let this sit overnight for many hours.
But I'm just going to let it sit for about a half hour, because we are going to light this on fire.
And when you light it on fire, that helps expedite this process.
While this rests we can make some tea. We're gonna make black tea - four cups of black tea.
The original recipe called for water, but I like the tea because it gives it a little bit more depth.
I'm using darjeeling, which is a black tea, but you can use whatever your favorite tea is.
I'm kind of guessing how many tea bags to do here.
We're doing four, but use your best judgment. Pour in your water, steep for a couple minutes.
After a few minutes, take the tea bags out - unless you want really bitter tea.
Set this aside, and we still have a little time on our hands, so take those three lemons we peeled earlier, and juice them.
I know this all sounds fragmented, but it's all going to make sense later - I promise.
And remember it's easier to juice room temperature lemons than cold lemons. And set this aside too.
All right, it's been about a half hour. Now to the lemon peels - the oleo-saccharum, we can add our booze.
So take two cups of your pineapple rum, pour it right over the top, and to that we will add one cup of cognac.
Give that a stir. Now we can put this on a low heat, warm it up, and then we set it on fire.
Now over low heat, we can bring this up in temperature, but don't boil. We don't want to cook off all the alcohol.
Heating this up helps dissolve some of those sugars, but it also makes it easier to light on fire later on.
Okay! This looks about ready. Turn off the heat, take a spoon,
and we're going to take a little bit of this, bring this over to the side and light it on fire.
As opposed to bringing the fire here because this is going to make a giant fireball.
Don't overfill the spoon. We don't want to dump it. I don't know if this is going to show up on camera.
It's going to be a blue flame.
I know it looks like I'm doing something illicit, but I'm not.
Be really careful because it's hard to see, especially with bright lights.
I promise you this is on fire.
And then carefully bring the spoon to the punch.
[whooshing sound of fire]
Be very careful, watch your face.
We're gonna turn the lights down. Hopefully you can see the blue flame.
All right, we're gonna go with the iPhone footage here because that apparently just looks better than the professional camera.
You can see it's a blue flame that's really hot, so be careful. Do not burn your face off.
We're gonna let this cook for about three minutes. It's gonna caramelize the sugars and help pull the lemon oil out.
Assuming you all still have your faces, we can put out the flames. For that - a cover.
[fading hissing sound]
Flame goes out immediately. Magic. [laughter] It's not magic. That was science.
Oh that smells so good!
At this point we can add the lemon juice that we squeezed earlier.
[sizzling noise]
And now we can add the tea. Four cups of black tea.
Then we can turn the heat back on just to bring it up to temp.
Obviously, again, don't let it boil. Give it a stir.
Once it's warmed up, turn the heat off. But before you serve, you want to take out all of the lemon peels.
They've done their jobs. Now if you're gonna serve this out of the pot for a group,
a nice thing to do is to float some orange or lemon wheels right on top,
but I'm gonna garnish this individually.
I just picked up these fancy teacups from a secondhand shop.
Thank you, Richard, if you're watching this.
Garnish however you'd like. You could do a wheel, nutmeg is very traditional.
I'm just doing a lemon zest. I like the bright lemon on the nose when you go in for a sip.
So right across the top.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Charles Dickens Punch.
Cheers!
I'm gonna take the one with a little cottage on it. Az, can I offer you some Charles Dickens Punch in a fancy cup?
Why yes, please! Please don't judge our matching shirts. It was not intentional. Cheers!
[laughter] Cheers.
Oh - Wow!
That is easy drinking.
That's really good!
You wouldn't notice the pineapple up front so much, but I think it really does help make the flavors a little bit more complex.
This is my new favorite thing.
To Charles Dickens and -
His punch!
- his punch.
Cheerio! I'm gonna let Anders do the sign off, and I'm gonna go keep an eye on the camera.
Toodles!
Thank you for watching! Like and subscribe! Happy holidays!
Cheers, everyone!
[music fades]