G.P. 6 Kingsley Amis’ Ten General Principles
Soak fruit in liquor before adding to a drink
Welcome back to the next iteration of my focus on the general principles Kingsley Amis lists in his excellent book, Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.
In the book, he lists ten general principles, which can be summarized:
For drinks accompanied by fruit or vegetables, try adding juice
Soak fruit in liquor before adding to a drink
Commercial mixes are okay
Wine preparation is important, but price is more so
He who believes he has a hangover does not
Eating fattens you
To refresh yourself on past principles, feel free to follow the links above to previous entries.
Here we go!
G.P. 6:
With drinks containing fruit (other than the decorative or olfactory slice of lemon, orange, etc.) it is really worth while to soak the fruit in some of the liquor for at least three hours beforehand.
There is an interesting section in the book where Kingsley lists out some punch recipes and he starts with a generic cold punch.
Generic Cold Punch
A lot of cheap medium-dry wine, white, red or rosé
Some vodka—not more than one-quarter of the quantity of wine
A glass or two of some relatively non-sticky liqueur—optional
A load of any fresh fruit that happens to be about—peaches and strawberries are best
Ice cubes
“Cut up the fruit and put it in some sort of bowl—anything from a tureen to a baby's bath will do. Pour some of the wine over it and leave to stand as under G.P. 6. When the party approaches, add the rest of the drink and stir thoroughly.”
Kingsley's recipes are loose and I love that about his writing because it gives you, the drinker, lots of wiggle room. In the other punch recipes that follow only one other, The Careful Man's Peachy Punch, call for soaking fruit, peaches in that case. So it seems that this G.P. was important enough to mention for only two recipes.
In October, I wrote about punch and how it sadly doesn't make sense during a pandemic. Without gathering in large groups, mixing up bowls or "baby's baths" full of punch would not only be wasteful but impossible to drink for a pair of drinkers. When I would make punch for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would almost always make too much for a group of ten. It's easy to go overboard when filling a punch bowl. Hopefully the following information will up your punch game for a time in the near future when we can enjoy a bowl with friends.
So back to the fruit, why the soak? Well, soaking fruit in booze is not a new thing. If you look at German or Danish recipes for a Rumtopf, which uses fresh fruit and rum, or a classic Christmas cake recipe with soaked dried fruits, the benefit is two fold. The fruit itself picks up some of the alcohol flavors (and potency), and the alcohol picks up some of the fruit flavors!
I don't want to get as science-heavy as I did for last week's G.P. on fizzy drinks, but there are some terms we should talk about to clarify why soaking fruit in booze does anything at all, and why you should absolutely do it!
The whole concept is called maceration, and that simply means softening by soaking. Cucumbers macerate into pickles, my wife likes to macerate in a bubble bath, and sometimes I macerate an olive in a small amount of very cold gin and vermouth.
Another important term to know is osmosis, which means the transfer of liquid from a lower concentration to a higher concentration. Brining pork chops would be a great and delicious example of this phenomenon. The salt in a saline brining solution triggers the process, and the water in the pork is pulled out and replaced with flavored brine.
Sugar can also act as a catalyst for osmosis, and that is exactly what alcohol does to fruit because it is hydrophilic, or attracted to water, just like sugar. You can see this in action if you leave a lemon or orange peel in a glass of water overnight or a few hours with vodka. When you check on it, the liquid will have taken on the color of the peel.
So the easiest way to explain what happens when you pour alcohol on fruit is that the fruit and the booze start swapping liquids trying to reach a balance or equilibrium. This is a good thing!
Something else to pay attention to is the type of fruit you are using and proof of alcohol. Higher proof spirits will act faster than something low proof like wine. The skin thickness of the fruit and the firmness of the flesh will slow the process. Berries and melons work very quickly, while apples, pears, and dried fruits take a bit more time. Of course, nobody will complain, but I certainly don't want a soggy slice of strawberry floating in my cup.
Kingsley being the forward thinker he is, adds: “Soaked fruit looks nasty. (If you want to do the thing in style, you will have a fresh supply of fruit to go in the individual glasses.)”
So what happens if you don't soak your fruit before making a punch? Nothing really. It will taste fine if you follow the classic rhyme:
One of sour, two of sweet,
three of strong, four of weak,
A dash of bitters and a sprinkle of spice,
serve well chilled with plenty of ice.
This recipe rhyme works every time, but if you want a punch that is more than fine, follow Kingsley's advice and soak that fruit!
To take your punch to an even higher level, you can make an oleo saccharum, or sugar oil, by leaving citrus peels in sugar overnight. The sugar kickstarts the osmosis process and pulls the oil from the peels making a delicious sweet base for your punch. Who knew that punch had so much going on under the surface? I'm starting to feel like I am back in 7th-grade science class, but instead of sipping on a Capri Sun, I am passing a flask with my teacher this time.
Next week we tackle an extremely important G.P.:
G.P. 7:
Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naïve-or worse.
In the same chapter, Kingsley tucks in another bit of advice he claimed to be "very nearly worth erecting into a G.P.," but it didn't make his final list. I'll be going over that secret G.P. too! I think it's an important one!
Thanks for reading!