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Cloved Orange Punch
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chanaleh is getting married next weekend, and so, this past weekend, she threw a bachelorette party. Well, ablock, aka Pup, threw it for her, and, as there was a sign on the door stating, "What happens at Pup's, STAYS at Pup's," I won't mention too many details. Except I'll reassure folks that nothing blackmail-able happened, even adjusting for the fact that a goodly number of the people there are leaders in the Boston progressive Jewish community.
Among the purposes of the party, however, was flirting, andgilana contacted me to design a theme drink for the party that would help this.
In the Society for Creative Anachronism, there exists a tradition called the "cloved orange". One takes an orange, and sticks cloves all in it. One then takes this orange and presents it to someone. The person may politely decline to take the orange, or may take the orange and remove a clove with their hand, in which case you kiss their hand, or may pull a clove out with their teeth, in which case you kiss them on the mouth.
So the cloved orange is a symbol of flirtatiousness, and I was assigned to create a drink based on this idea.
My first realization was that this was a perfect situation for a punch, rather than a cocktail. I'm sure that some of you out there still have horrible associations with punch, since, for so many decades, punch HAS been horrible. Yet it wasn't always so. Punch was once a category of delicious drinks, associated with celebration and hospitality.
David Wondrich, among others, has been rehabilitating the reputation of this kind of drink, and I've been following their research. And this was a perfect opportunity to try to put what I've learned into practice.
A bowl of punch has many advantages for a party. One of its most important is that I was able to make it, and then leave it alone -- I was able to go and enjoy the party myself, without being "stuck" mixing drinks all night. I put "stuck" in quotes, because I enjoy mixing drinks at parties, but, for a party with a theme of flirting, I wanted to have a little more freedom to wander around. But just as important -- punch is served in little cups, so you go back repeatedly to fill them -- which encourages mingling. If the snacks are over THERE, and the punchbowl is over HERE, then people will walk back and forth, and interact with each other more. Also, the punchbowl is a source of commonality. If you have nothing else in common with a person, well, you are at least DRINKING the same thing, and you can use that as an icebreaker.
But in order to make all these things work, the punch has to be good.
So, the assignment: create a punch for the party, based on the flavor, and the flirtatiousness, of the cloved orange -- create a drink that would be tasty, easy to drink, yet have some kick to it.
When starting to design a punch, you have to balance several flavors. There's a rhyme that gives some proportions: "One of sour, two of sweet; three of strong, and four of weak." That's a traditional recipe for rum punch -- one part lime juice, two parts simple syrup, three parts rum, and four parts water.
However: there is a story that the word "punch" derives from the Hindi word for "five": पांच which is pronounced something like "paanch". And, in fact, the traditional punch involves FIVE elements, not just those four. (It was developed by people working for the East India Company, in India, during the seventeenth century, so the Hindi connection isn't ridiculous.) The five traditional elements of punch are citrus, sugar, liquor, water -- and spices.
This dovetailed perfectly with my assignment. Now, punches don't have to restrict themselves to only those things, but you do need a balance of sweet and sour, of alcoholic bite mellowed with water, and with other flavors to make things interesting.
I wanted to use some liqueurs to bring in orange and clove flavor. The orange was obvious -- Cointreau is my favorite orange-flavored liqueur, and I thought it would work well. I thought of using a cheaper liqueur, and, in fact, bought some . . . but found myself having deep misgivings. I returned the Bols unopened, and bought the good stuff.
For clove flavor, I went with Benedictine, which is made with a secret recipe of dozens of herbs and spices -- but in which cloves are pretty obvious. As both Benedictine and Cointreau are sweet liqueurs, that took care of my "sweet" part, as well.
Orange juice added a little bit more of the "sour," but not enough to balance the sweet, so I added some lemon juice as well. For the liquor (in addition to the alcohol already in the Cointreau and Benedictine), I chose the fruitiness of a mixing brandy, and the bite of the Brazilian rum cachaça.
But I needed something else -- a few more things, actually. First, I needed a way to dilute the mixture. Second, I needed to bring forward the clove flavor -- and punching up the orange wouldn't be bad, either.
And finally, I needed just a little bit of bitterness to round out and bring forward the rest of the flavors.
Black tea has just enough of the right kind of bitterness to do this, and I brewed it with a handful of cloves and a handful of dried orange peel.
The result was quite pleasant.
Here's what I came up with.
Once this is mixed up in a punchbowl, you ought to taste it, and you may find you wish to make a few small adjustments -- a bit more lemon juice, maybe a dash more Benedictine. . . the exact fine-tuning really needs to be done just as you are getting ready to serve it.
I also took a bundt pan, filled it with water, and froze it, to make an ice ring to keep the punch cold, and to look a little nicer. And we cloved three oranges, and set them floating in the bowl as garnish.
The result was popular, and several gallons were consumed.
chanaleh is getting married next weekend, and so, this past weekend, she threw a bachelorette party. Well, ablock, aka Pup, threw it for her, and, as there was a sign on the door stating, "What happens at Pup's, STAYS at Pup's," I won't mention too many details. Except I'll reassure folks that nothing blackmail-able happened, even adjusting for the fact that a goodly number of the people there are leaders in the Boston progressive Jewish community. Among the purposes of the party, however, was flirting, and
gilana contacted me to design a theme drink for the party that would help this.In the Society for Creative Anachronism, there exists a tradition called the "cloved orange". One takes an orange, and sticks cloves all in it. One then takes this orange and presents it to someone. The person may politely decline to take the orange, or may take the orange and remove a clove with their hand, in which case you kiss their hand, or may pull a clove out with their teeth, in which case you kiss them on the mouth.
So the cloved orange is a symbol of flirtatiousness, and I was assigned to create a drink based on this idea.
My first realization was that this was a perfect situation for a punch, rather than a cocktail. I'm sure that some of you out there still have horrible associations with punch, since, for so many decades, punch HAS been horrible. Yet it wasn't always so. Punch was once a category of delicious drinks, associated with celebration and hospitality.
David Wondrich, among others, has been rehabilitating the reputation of this kind of drink, and I've been following their research. And this was a perfect opportunity to try to put what I've learned into practice.
A bowl of punch has many advantages for a party. One of its most important is that I was able to make it, and then leave it alone -- I was able to go and enjoy the party myself, without being "stuck" mixing drinks all night. I put "stuck" in quotes, because I enjoy mixing drinks at parties, but, for a party with a theme of flirting, I wanted to have a little more freedom to wander around. But just as important -- punch is served in little cups, so you go back repeatedly to fill them -- which encourages mingling. If the snacks are over THERE, and the punchbowl is over HERE, then people will walk back and forth, and interact with each other more. Also, the punchbowl is a source of commonality. If you have nothing else in common with a person, well, you are at least DRINKING the same thing, and you can use that as an icebreaker.
But in order to make all these things work, the punch has to be good.
So, the assignment: create a punch for the party, based on the flavor, and the flirtatiousness, of the cloved orange -- create a drink that would be tasty, easy to drink, yet have some kick to it.
When starting to design a punch, you have to balance several flavors. There's a rhyme that gives some proportions: "One of sour, two of sweet; three of strong, and four of weak." That's a traditional recipe for rum punch -- one part lime juice, two parts simple syrup, three parts rum, and four parts water.
However: there is a story that the word "punch" derives from the Hindi word for "five": पांच which is pronounced something like "paanch". And, in fact, the traditional punch involves FIVE elements, not just those four. (It was developed by people working for the East India Company, in India, during the seventeenth century, so the Hindi connection isn't ridiculous.) The five traditional elements of punch are citrus, sugar, liquor, water -- and spices.
This dovetailed perfectly with my assignment. Now, punches don't have to restrict themselves to only those things, but you do need a balance of sweet and sour, of alcoholic bite mellowed with water, and with other flavors to make things interesting.
I wanted to use some liqueurs to bring in orange and clove flavor. The orange was obvious -- Cointreau is my favorite orange-flavored liqueur, and I thought it would work well. I thought of using a cheaper liqueur, and, in fact, bought some . . . but found myself having deep misgivings. I returned the Bols unopened, and bought the good stuff.
For clove flavor, I went with Benedictine, which is made with a secret recipe of dozens of herbs and spices -- but in which cloves are pretty obvious. As both Benedictine and Cointreau are sweet liqueurs, that took care of my "sweet" part, as well.
Orange juice added a little bit more of the "sour," but not enough to balance the sweet, so I added some lemon juice as well. For the liquor (in addition to the alcohol already in the Cointreau and Benedictine), I chose the fruitiness of a mixing brandy, and the bite of the Brazilian rum cachaça.
But I needed something else -- a few more things, actually. First, I needed a way to dilute the mixture. Second, I needed to bring forward the clove flavor -- and punching up the orange wouldn't be bad, either.
And finally, I needed just a little bit of bitterness to round out and bring forward the rest of the flavors.
Black tea has just enough of the right kind of bitterness to do this, and I brewed it with a handful of cloves and a handful of dried orange peel.
The result was quite pleasant.
Here's what I came up with.
1 part brandy
1 part cachaça (a Brazilian rum with its own characteristic flavor)
1 part Benedictine
1 part Cointreau
1 part orange juice
1/2 part lemon juice
2 parts black tea brewed with cloves and dried orange peel
Once this is mixed up in a punchbowl, you ought to taste it, and you may find you wish to make a few small adjustments -- a bit more lemon juice, maybe a dash more Benedictine. . . the exact fine-tuning really needs to be done just as you are getting ready to serve it.
I also took a bundt pan, filled it with water, and froze it, to make an ice ring to keep the punch cold, and to look a little nicer. And we cloved three oranges, and set them floating in the bowl as garnish.
The result was popular, and several gallons were consumed.
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(Oooh, I could make orange-clove brownies. Oooooh.)
I am reminded to mention that
Martini with a bit of olive juice = dirty martini
Martini with a bit of juice from olives that have been marinated in spicy oil = filthy martini
Filthy martini set on fire = Potomac martini!
Mind you, once you set vodka on fire I'm not sure how you put it out...
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;D
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I think a good answer would be something like a candle snuffer in functionality. Probably a small glass pot lid, or something like that, would work well.
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Also sounds like it was a great party.
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About equal booze to non-booze... looks interesting.