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Black tea, lemon, sugar, fruit, soda. A serious punch from the 1880s temperance bar canon — built to fill a bowl, serve a crowd, and prove a point.

The Women's Christian Temperance Union maintained an entire publishing arm in the 1880s dedicated to non-alcoholic recipes for social occasions. Many of those punches were exceptional — they had to be, because the social pressure was on the temperance hostess to prove she could entertain without alcohol. Some of those recipes are better than the alcoholic equivalents of the same era. This one is a direct revival of an 1887 WCTU pamphlet recipe.

Ingredients

• Strong Brewed Black Tea (cooled)16 ounces
• Fresh Lemon Juice4 ounces
• Fresh Orange Juice4 ounces
• Simple Syrup4 ounces
• Soda Water16 ounces
• Sliced Seasonal Fruit (strawberries, peach, citrus)1 each

Directions

Brew tea, cool fully. In a punch bowl, combine cooled tea, lemon juice, orange juice, simple syrup, and sliced fruit. Refrigerate at least 2 hours. Just before serving, add a block of ice and top with soda water. Float lemon and orange wheels. Ladle into punch cups.

Notes

Brew the tea strong (twice the normal leaves) and let it cool fully before mixing. The tea's tannin is doing the structural work that spirit would do in an alcoholic punch — without it, this collapses into fruit juice.