Fish House Punch

Jamaican rum, cognac, peach brandy, and lemon — the 1732 State in Schuylkill formula, Washington reportedly missing three diary days after drinking it.

Fish House Punch is the oldest documented American punch recipe still in active use, created in 1732 by members of the State in Schuylkill fishing and social club in Philadelphia. The club — founded that year by twenty-eight men who were followers of William Penn and initially called the Colony in Schuylkill — met regularly at their clubhouse on the banks of the Schuylkill River, which they called the Castle. The punch they developed combined Jamaican rum, cognac, peach brandy, lemon juice, and sugar in a large communal bowl — a formula that has remained essentially unchanged for nearly three centuries. The earliest external documentation comes from 1744, when William Black, a secretary accompanying a Virginia diplomatic delegation, described being served at the Schuylkill banks a bowl of lemon punch large enough, he wrote, to have swimmed half a dozen of young geese. George Washington, who attended events at the State in Schuylkill on multiple occasions alongside the Marquis de Lafayette, is the subject of a famous piece of American drinking lore: after a Fish House dinner, Washington reportedly left no diary entries for the following three days. The punch's reputation was such that it appeared in Jerry Thomas's foundational 1862 Bar-Tender's Guide and was described by cocktail historian David Wondrich as the most famous punch in American history. The State in Schuylkill still exists today as one of the oldest social clubs in the United States and continues to serve the punch using the original formula.