If you think punch isn’t punch unless it’s served in a great big bowl, think again. The earliest punches were single drinks, like the ones you’ll find here. Punch bowl–size recipes are, where you’ll find Four Seasons specials good for ladling up in—you guessed it—spring, summer, fall, and winter.
The origin of punch remains in doubt, but all signs point to India. In Travels in India in the Seventeenth Century, John Fryer wrote, “. . . the English on the Coast [almost surely from the East India Company] make that enervating Liquor called Punch (which is Indostan for Five) from Five Ingredients.” Some food-and-drink historians have ascertained that the five components were wine or spirits; water or milk; lemon or lime; sugar; and spice(s)—all found in one drink or another in the pages that follow.