What Did People Drink in the 1700s? Recipes

1710Salmon’s Punch Royal of brandy and lime
1733Hogarth’s Midnight Modern Conversation
1739Eliza Smith’s shrub and barley water
1747Hannah Glasse’s whipt syllabub
1755Johnson defines shrub: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed”
1763Franklin’s milk punch receipt
178759 bottles of Madeira at the City Tavern

The years on this page

1710 Salmon’s Punch Royal of brandy and lime
1733 Hogarth’s Midnight Modern Conversation
1739 Eliza Smith’s shrub and barley water
1747 Hannah Glasse’s whipt syllabub
1755 Johnson defines shrub: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed”
1763 Franklin’s milk punch receipt
1787 59 bottles of Madeira at the City Tavern

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Clear pale golden milk punch in a tall-stemmed conical wine glass and a small loop-handled punch cup, beside a squat dark green corked bottle and a nutmeg on a brass grater, on white linen over mahogany before green paneling.

Benjamin Franklin’s Milk Punch

Brandy steeped with lemon peel, then nutmeg, lemon, sugar and boiling milk, dripped clear through a jelly bag and bottled: Franklin’s 1763 receipt at a twelfth of the size.

A corked glass bottle and a stemmed glass of pale cloudy straw-colored barley water, the glass with a strip of lemon peel, stand with a brown earthenware pot and half a lemon on pale pine.

Always alcohol-free

Sodas & Soft Drinks · 2 hr 30 min total

Barley Water with Lemon and Mace

Pearl barley boiled until the water turns silky, spiced with mace, sharpened with lemon and sweetened: barley water from Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife (1739). Alcohol-free.

Three short-stemmed flared glasses hold dark red wine beneath whipped cream on gray marble, beside a lemon and metal grater against a blue wall.

Drink · 15 min total

Whipt Syllabub, Hannah Glasse’s Cream and Sack from 1747

Thick cream whisked with sack, Seville orange or lemon juice, grated lemon peel and fine sugar, and the froth laid over sweetened red wine in glasses: the whipt syllabub of Hannah Glasse’s 1747 cookery book.

What did people drink in the 1700s?

Punch, wine, beer and tea, in roughly that order of fame. In Britain the 1700s were the century of the punch bowl: brandy or rum with citrus, sugar and water, mixed by the bowl for a table of men, as in Hogarth’s Midnight Modern Conversation of 1733. Beer and ale were still the everyday drinks, while tea, coffee and chocolate, new in the 1650s, had become part of ordinary life for anyone who could pay.

The household books of the century show what was made at home. Eliza Smith’s Compleat Housewife of 1739 bottled shrub, brandy with lemon, white wine and sugar, and boiled pearl barley into barley water with lemon and mace. Hannah Glasse whipped cream with sack and citrus into syllabub in 1747, and offered lemon whey in place of the wine. Negus, port and hot water with sugar, lemon and nutmeg, is in print by 1745 and went round at balls for more than a century after. When Samuel Johnson defined shrub in his Dictionary of 1755, he wrote: “Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed.”

Across the Atlantic the same drinks crossed with the settlers and changed. George Washington wrote down a small beer of bran, hops and molasses in 1757, and Benjamin Franklin sent a friend his receipt for a milk punch, made clear through a jelly bag, in 1763. In French Canada spruce beer was brewed from boiled branches and molasses, and in the French islands the Dominican Labat watched planters froth chocolate with a fresh egg and copy the English sangaree.

This page covers Britain, Europe and the colonies together; the American side has its own page in colonial drinks. Every recipe here comes from a book, letter or record of the century, each page names its source, and the alcohol-free drinks are marked.

Each recipe names the period book it comes from and says what we changed. How we research

Spirit, acid, and sugar mixed.

Samuel Johnson’s definition of shrub, A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

What did people drink in 18th-century England?

Beer and ale every day, tea and coffee as the new habit, and punch, wine and cordials for company. Households bottled their own: Eliza Smith’s 1739 shrub of brandy, lemon and white wine comes out near the strength of a liqueur, kept in the cupboard as a cordial or a ready-made base for punch.

The storyShrub: One Name, Two Very Different Drinks

A small short-stemmed glass of clear pale gold cordial stands with a squat corked dark green bottle and half a lemon on worn dark oak against a brick-red wall.

Shrubs, Syrups & Cordials · 3 days 30 min total

Brandy Shrub with Lemon and White Wine

Brandy steeped three days with lemon juice, lemon peel and nutmeg, then mixed with white wine and sugar and strained twice: the English shrub of 1739, at about 24% ABV.

What did Georgians drink at balls?

Negus, more than anything: wine, usually port, with hot water, sugar, lemon and nutmeg, poured warm from a jug. A common rule of one part port to two of water puts a glass at about 6 to 7% alcohol. The word is in print by 1745, and the drink was still handed round at balls a century later.

The storyNegus, the Warm Wine of Georgian Balls

What did the Founding Fathers drink?

Madeira and claret at the table, punch by the bowl, porter, cider and beer, with small beer as the everyday household drink. A Philadelphia tavern bill for a dinner three days before the Constitution was signed in 1787 counts 59 bottles of Madeira, 76 of claret and 14 bowls of punch.

The storyWhat Did the Founding Fathers Drink?

A plain pewter mug of amber-brown beer with a thin loose froth stands beside a squat corked green bottle, with an iron-hooped wooden bucket behind on a rough plank table by a window and whitewashed log wall.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 9 days total

George Washington’s Small Beer from His 1757 Notebook

Bran and hops boiled three hours, strained onto molasses and worked a week: the small beer in the notebook George Washington kept as a Virginia colonel in 1757.

What did pirates drink?

Rum and punch, above all. The pirates of the 1710s and 1720s ran on them, and a strong lime punch of brandy, spring water and double-refined sugar was printed in London in 1710, in the years of Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts. Roberts himself was remembered as a sober man who drank tea.

The storyWhat Did Pirates Drink?

Pale cloudy amber punch in a blue-and-white earthenware bowl with a pewter ladle and two short-stem glasses, beside three lime halves and a white sugar cone on dark oak.

Punches & Cups · 1 hr 10 min total

Punch Royal, the 1710 Lime and Brandy Punch

Brandy, spring water, a pint of lime juice and a pound of double-refined sugar: William Salmon’s strong lime punch of 1710, from the years of Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts.

What did people drink in New France and the French islands?

In Canada, spruce beer in summer and, for people of rank, chocolate or coffee at breakfast and red wine with water at dinner. In the islands, chocolate frothed with a fresh egg, and Madeira sangaree copied from the English, both in Labat’s account of 1722.

The storyWhat Did People Drink in New France?

A glass of hazy amber spruce beer with thin white foam beside a wooden cask, fresh green spruce sprig, toasted rolled oats and a capped brown plastic bottle on a rough bench in a whitewashed cellar.

Wine, Beer & Mead · 5 days total

Canadian Spruce Beer from a French Book of 1755

Spruce branches boiled until the bark slips, roasted oats and toast, molasses and beer yeast: spruce beer as Canada made it, printed in Paris in 1755, at one gallon.

Two white faience cups with blue decoration and mounds of pale gray-brown chocolate froth beside a copper pot with a wooden mill through its lid, a rough cacao paste block and one brown egg on dark wood by a shuttered window.

Always alcohol-free

Hot Drinks · 20 min total

Island Chocolate Frothed with a Fresh Egg, Martinique 1722

Grated cacao, sugar, cinnamon and a whole fresh egg, worked into boiling water and milled to a thick froth: chocolate as the French islands made it, from Labat’s 1722 account.

Which 18th-century drinks had no alcohol?

Barley water, whey, tea and chocolate, and milk drinks for the sickroom and the farm. Glasse’s syllabub could be spooned over lemon whey instead of wine, Iceland’s farms drank whey and water as blanda, and an Irish letter of 1784 describes roasted apples beaten into hot milk at Halloween.

The storyAlcohol-Free Drinks Through History

Three short-stemmed glasses hold pale yellow-green whey beneath cream, with one golden cap, beside two oranges and a lemon on wood against an olive wall.

Alcohol-free version

25 min total

Alcohol-Free Whipt Syllabub over Lemon Whey

Cream whisked with orange and lemon juice, grated lemon peel and fine sugar, spooned over sweetened lemon whey, which Hannah Glasse offered in 1747 in place of the wine.

Thin pale whey and water in a birch cup beside glossy black crowberries and flowering thyme on dark slate over a weathered blue-gray bench against a turf wall.

Always alcohol-free

Sodas & Soft Drinks · 8 hr 30 min total

Blanda, Icelandic Whey and Water with Thyme

Cold water sharpened with sour whey and scented with thyme: the everyday farm drink of Iceland, recorded in 1772, from a saga-age word.

A cream earthenware mug of thick pale milk flecked with apple pulp and nutmeg, beside a matching jug, two split roasted apples on a dish and a few hazelnuts on a dark slate hearth.

Always alcohol-free

Hot Drinks · 55 min total

Lambswool with Milk, Roasted Apples Beaten into Hot Milk

The soft pulp of roasted apples beaten into hot milk with nutmeg, ginger and sugar: the milk lambswool of an Irish Halloween, from a 1784 letter.

A porcelain cup of clear amber tea on a saucer beside a teapot, a small dish of rough white sugar lumps and a plate with two buttered bread slices and thin dried beef, on a scrubbed wooden table by a softly lit window.

Always alcohol-free

Hot Drinks · 7 min total

Albany Breakfast Tea with Sugar in the Mouth, 1749

Black tea without milk, drunk with a small lump of sugar held in the mouth: breakfast tea as a Swedish visitor saw the Dutch of Albany take it in 1749.

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