THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: Lemon

Lisa Karen Miller

          Lemons tend to be associated with hot weather – lemonade, lemon bars, and lemon-spiked iced tea are all summer favorites. While they may not immediately spring to mind when you think of the yuletide, they have long been a key ingredient in that most festive of drinks, Christmas punch.

          Here’s an old recipe from The Gentleman’s Magazine:

          “Take a bottle of dark rum and put to it 24 ounces of cold tea, add to it the juice of a half a lemon and two or three tablespoons of the best Muscovado [a dark brown sugar with a high molasses content].  Grate in some nutmeg and lemon rind as you please it.  This makes about a quart of a fine and pleasant liquor.”

          Charles Dickens loved a good punch at any time of year, but especially at Christmas. He prepared it for his guests personally, thrusting a red hot poker into their tankards to make a hot drink for a cold night. In A Christmas Carol, the Cratchit family begin their feast with a toast of punch.  Here is one imagined version of that recipe, from Drinking with Dickens:

Bob Cratchit’s Hot Gin Punch

2 cups  gin 
2 cups sweet Madeira wine
1 tablespoon dark brown sugar, or more to taste
Peel and juice of 1 lemon, or more to taste
Peel and juice of 1 orange
1 pineapple, peeled, cored, and sliced
3 whole cloves
3 cinnamon sticks
Pinch of ground nutmeg

Put all the ingredients in a pot over medium heat. Simmer for 30 minutes; taste and adjust the balance of flavors with more brown sugar or lemon juice if desired. Serve warm.  

          An old adage gives the formula for the perfect stiff punch:

“One of sour,

Two of sweet,

Three of strong,

And four of weak”

          The sour is fresh lemon or lime juice, the sweet is sugar or syrup (try agave nectar or cane syrup for a unique taste), the strong is the liquor of your choice, and the weak is water – plain, flavored, or carbonated.  Add a few gratings of fresh nutmeg and you’re ready to entertain.

          Of course, lemon is a key ingredient in that old remedy for winter colds – hot whiskey, honey, and lemon.  It really does cut through the congestion and help you sleep.

          However you take your lemon this season, raise a toast to the man himself – Charles Dickens, who forever changed how we think of Christmas.

© Copyright 2023 Lisa Karen Miller