Fish House Punch Recipe

It Packs a Punch !

Favorite Restaurant Drink Recipe

The Story of The Fish House Punch Recipe

One day some years ago a "long-liner" (a fisherman for halibut and salmon) who was also a regular customer at the restaurant asked me if I had ever heard of Fish House Punch. I hadn't that I could recall.

He briefly described it and asked if I would serve such a punch to him and his fishermen friends each year when they returned home, the season being over and a cause for their annual celebration.

Once a year since then, the lounge has been home to a group of about 15 long-liners and their wives. The Fish House Punch is always ready for them.

A Fish House Punch is a very old punch recipe from the East Coast dating back to at least the late 1700's, as far as I can determine.

The original version of a Fish House Punch was created for an annual get-together around Christmas time with the ladies also invited. The purpose of the punch was to please the ladies and make them even livelier than normal. (Some things, I think, never change.)

These annual affairs (oops) were apparently quite successful, or should I say the punch recipe performed well?

In 1885 the Philadelphia Inquirer published a poem that had been written specifically about the strength of the punch.

Fish House Punch

There's a little place just out of town,
Where, if you go to lunch,
They'll make you forget your mother-in-law
With a drink called Fish House Punch.
(The Cook -1885)

This punch recipe is at least very close to the original. It is the one I use for the fishermen and their wives and once in a while for certain parties if they make the request.