Planter’s Punch as Fun Printed It in Verse (1878)
Reader ratingsOne wine-glass of lemon juice, two of sugar, three of rum and four of cold water: Planter’s Punch as the London weekly Fun printed it in verse in 1878.
- Recipe makes
- About 550 ml, 4 drinks
- Prep
- Total
The 1878 Planter’s Punch in a heavy tumbler, with an empty wine glass for the measure, half a lemon and a cream water jug.
The story behind the recipe
One glass of lemon juice, two of sugar, three of rum and four of cold water: the oldest Planter’s Punch we can find is a recipe you count on your fingers, and it came as a rhyme. On September 4, 1878, Fun, a comic weekly in London, ran “Planter’s Punch! A West Indian Recipe,” eight lines of verse that rub the sugar into the lemon juice, add the rum and water, and sign off “At least, so they say in Jamaica.”
Who the planters were
The name points to the men who owned Jamaica’s sugar estates, which made the sugar and the rum alike. Enslaved people worked those estates until emancipation: the British act took effect in 1834, and an apprenticeship system kept the freed workers bound to the estates until 1838. Forty years on, the drink was comic verse in a London weekly. The rhyme names no inventor, and no earlier record does either.
Later rhymes changed the words. A version in The New York Times in 1908 swapped lime in for lemon and shuffled the sour and the sweet. Nina Toye and A. H. Adair’s 1925 book, Drinks, Long & Short, printed in London, had the lines that stuck: “One of sour (lime juice), / Two of sweet (sugar),” and so on to the strong and the weak. Rum spent most of the century in bowls like this one before bartenders shook it into a cocktail glass; From Punch Bowl to Shaker: How Rum Got Into Cocktails follows it there.
Read more about this recipe
By the wine-glass
A Victorian wine-glass held about 2 fluid ounces, so one measure here is 60 ml. The batch makes about 550 ml, four drinks of about 13% ABV, each close to one US standard drink. It is sweet as printed, about 185 grams of sugar per liter, more than most colas. Fun says cold water and no ice, so chill the water in the fridge first; a few ice cubes in the glass are our choice on a hot day.
Mrs. Beeton’s hot punch of 1861 makes the same rum, lemon and sugar into a winter bowl. Leave out the rum, and the same lemon, sugar and water make Mrs. Beeton’s lemonade.
A wine-glass with lemon juice fill,
Of sugar the same glass fill twice,
Then rub them together until
The mixture looks smooth, soft, and nice.
Of rum then three wine glassfuls add,
And four of cold water please take. A
Drink then you’ll have that’s not bad—
At least, so they say in Jamaica.
Recipe makes: About 550 ml, 4 drinks
Ingredients
For About 550 ml, 4 drinks. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 550 ml, 4 drinks.
- Fresh lemon juice60 ml
- Caster sugar100 g
- Dark Jamaica rum180 ml
- Chilled water240 ml
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 60 ml fresh lemon juice
- 100 g caster sugar
- 180 ml dark Jamaica rum
- 240 ml chilled water
Equipment
Citrus juicer
Jug
Spoon
Tumbler
Instructions
Squeeze the fresh lemon juice into a jug, add the caster sugar and rub and stir them together with the back of a spoon until the mixture is smooth and nearly all the sugar has dissolved.
Stir in the dark Jamaica rum, then the chilled water, and keep stirring until no sugar is left on the bottom.
Pour into tumblers and serve cold.
Nutrition
195calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 550 ml, 4 drinks
- Servings
- 4
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof rum (64 calories per fl oz), granulated sugar and lemon juice, for one of four drinks.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
The rhyme is a ratio, one, two, three, four: keep it when you scale. One wine-glass measure here is 60 ml.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
The 1878 rhyme names only “rum”; Jamaica’s dark rum is the one it implies. For a less sweet punch, use 50 g sugar, our option. Measuring by any one glass keeps the rhyme’s proportions: one of lemon juice, two of sugar, three of rum, four of water.
The 1925 serve: Toye and Adair’s version takes lime juice in place of lemon, and the rum punch they match it to is served very cold. Make it with lime juice and pour it over ice cubes in each tumbler.
A dry party of 1920 kept the citrus and sugar of a punch and dropped the rum: the Ginger Ale Punch pours tea, orange and lemon over a block of ice.
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
“Planter’s Punch! A West Indian Recipe”, Fun (London), new series vol. XXVIII, September 4, 1878, p. 102; the later rhyme from Nina Toye & A. H. Adair, Drinks, Long & Short (London: Heinemann, 1925), p. 43
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Punches & Cups
- Era
- 19th century
- Source decade
- 1870s
- Base
- Rum
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Season
- Summer