Philadelphia Fish House Punch, Cognac, Peach Brandy and Rum from 1862
Reader ratingsLemon juice and sugar with Cognac, peach brandy and Jamaica rum, lengthened with plenty of cold water and served over ice: the Philadelphia Fish-House Punch of Jerry Thomas’s 1862 bar guide.
- Recipe makes
- About 9 1/2 cups, 18 punch cups
- Prep
- Total
Plus at least 2 hours to chill the punch, and overnight to freeze the ice block.
Fish House Punch in a glass bowl over a block of ice, with punch cups, lemons and a juicer.
The story behind the recipe
Philadelphia Fish House Punch is lemon juice and sugar with Cognac, peach brandy and Jamaica rum, lengthened with a great deal of cold water and served over ice. The earliest printed recipe we found is in Jerry Thomas’s bar guide of 1862, “From a recipe in the possession of Charles G. Leland, Esq.,” the Philadelphia-born writer. The 1862 page gives the three spirits as “1 pint of mixture,” with the parts in a footnote; the 1887 edition, quoted below, sets them out in the recipe and ends with a joke in italics: “The above is generally sufficient for one person.” It makes about nine and a half cups.
The fishing club
The name points to the Schuylkill Fishing Company, a Philadelphia gentlemen’s club founded in 1732 that met at its own fish house on the Schuylkill River. The club’s history, printed in 1830, records “Iced Punch, Lemonade, &c.” laid on when Lafayette visited in 1825, but it gives no recipe and never says what went into the punch. Later stories seat George Washington at the club’s table with this very bowl; no source we found shows what the club served before Leland’s recipe reached print. For another Philadelphia punch with a better paper trail, read What Was Franklin’s Clarified Milk Punch?
Read more about this recipe
Peach brandy then and now
Thomas’s peach brandy was a spirit distilled from fermented peaches, as dry as the Cognac beside it, not the sweet peach liqueur often sold under that name today. A dry peach eau-de-vie is the nearest match. If peach liqueur is all you have, use it and cut the sugar by about a quarter, since it brings its own.
The water is what makes this a long punch rather than a strong one: two and a half pints of it to a pint of spirits, which brings the bowl to about 8 percent alcohol before the ice starts to melt. The same book’s Tea Punch uses hot green tea in its place, and for a bowl with no spirits at all, make the Alcohol-Free Tea Punch.
Philadelphia Fish-House Punch. (From a recipe in the possession of Charles G. Leland, Esq.) Take ⅓ pint of lemon juice. ¾ pound of white sugar dissolved in sufficient water. ½ pint of Cognac brandy. ¼ pint of Peach brandy. ¼ pint of Jamaica rum. 2½ pints of cold water. Ice and serve. The above is generally sufficient for one person.
Recipe makes: About 9 1/2 cups, 18 punch cups
Ingredients
For About 9 1/2 cups, 18 punch cups. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 9 1/2 cups, 18 punch cups.
- Granulated sugar340 g
- Hot water1 cup
- Fresh lemon juice (about 4 lemons)2/3 cup
- Cognac1 cup
- Peach brandy, a dry peach eau-de-vie1/2 cup
- Jamaica rum1/2 cup
- Cold water5 cups
- Large block of ice1
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 340 g granulated sugar
- 1 cup hot water
- 2/3 cup fresh lemon juice (about 4 lemons)
- 1 cup Cognac
- 1/2 cup peach brandy, a dry peach eau-de-vie
- 1/2 cup Jamaica rum
- 5 cups cold water
- 1 large block of ice
Equipment
Citrus juicer
Heatproof bowl or jug
Punch bowl and ladle
Loaf pan, for the ice block
Cups
Instructions
The day before, fill a loaf pan with water and freeze it into a block.
Stir the granulated sugar into the hot water in a heatproof bowl or jug until it has completely dissolved, then leave it to cool.
Pour the cooled syrup into the punch bowl and stir in the fresh lemon juice.
Add the Cognac, the peach brandy, the Jamaica rum and the cold water, and stir well.
Cover and chill the punch for at least 2 hours.
To serve, dip the loaf pan briefly in warm water, turn out the large block of ice and slide it into the bowl. Ladle the punch into cups.
Nutrition
130calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 9 1/2 cups, 18 punch cups
- Servings
- 18
Roughly estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof brandy and rum, granulated sugar and lemon juice, for one 1/2-cup punch cup.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is Thomas’s bowl as printed. For half a bowl, halve everything and freeze a smaller block.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Changes from the source: Thomas’s pints are US pints of 2 cups, so his ⅓ pint of lemon juice is 2/3 cup and his ¾ pound of sugar is 340 g. He dissolves the sugar in “sufficient water” without saying how much; a cup of hot water does it. His “Ice and serve” doesn’t say what kind of ice, and the block from a loaf pan is our choice, because it melts slowly and keeps the punch from thinning too fast. The 1862 edition gives the same lemon juice, sugar and water, with “1 pint of mixture” for the three spirits and their parts in a footnote.
Strength: 2 cups of 40% spirits is 0.8 cup of alcohol in about 9 1/2 cups of punch, so about 8%, or a little over half a US standard drink in each 1/2-cup punch cup.
Storage
Mix it on the day and keep it covered in the fridge; add the ice block only when you serve.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Jerry Thomas, How to Mix Drinks, or, The Bon-Vivant’s Companion (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1862), No. 46, “Philadelphia Fish-House Punch”, p. 29; wording from The Bar-Tender’s Guide (New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, 1887), p. 79
See the original pages (scan at Internet Archive) (opens in a new tab)
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Punches & Cups
- Region
- American
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1860s
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Occasion
- ChristmasNew Year’s Eve