Rowley’s Lemon Punsch Pie

I live in California where the mixers grow on trees. In some places, the lanes are so lousy with oranges or lemons that they truly are gutter trash. I’m still fascinated by it all.

When I had a sample of Erik Ellestad’s lemon-infused Swedish punsch at Tales of the Cocktail during the panel “Making Your Own Cocktail Ingredients” I realized I wanted to play around with the liqueur. So I tweaked one of his recipes to come up with a one-liter batch and am very pleased with it.

What to call this thing…I like “lemon punsch pie” but then “punch drunk pie” works or “punsch debris pie” or even “enhooched pie” since my take on an old Shaker recipe definitely carries a strong smell of delicious Swedish punsch from the enhooched lemons slices used to flavor it.

Call it what you want, this is a tasty pie—if prepared with the thinnest-sliced lemons. Honest, if your slices are thicker than, say, your knife blade, they’re too thick and will never be tender enough for the pie, no matter how low and slowly you bake it. Use a mandoline or a Benriner if you've got one.

Go on and gild the lily with a fat dollop of whipped cream, flavored with vanilla extract and a knifepoint of salt (which in small enough doses doesn’t taste of salt but enhances the creaminess of the cream. Seriously. Try it.).

Rowley’s Lemon Punsch Pie

Start by using the sliced lemons from a recipe of Swedish punsch (such as Erik's or mine). If you use either recipe, you’ll have too many slices, so discard about one-third of the volume.

• 9 oz/250g thinly sliced punsch lemons, seeded
• 2 cups/14.5 oz/420g granulated sugar
• 1 Tbl Swedish punsch (in addition to whatever clings to the lemons)
• A pinch of salt
• 4 eggs, beaten
• Egg white, beaten (to seal the edges and brush the top)
• Two 10” pie crusts, uncooked*

In a nonreactive container, mix the sugar, lemon slices, and additional tablespoon of punsch. Let rest overnight until a thick, sludgy syrup forms (not all the sugar will dissolve).

The next day, mix together the lemon slice sludge with the four beaten eggs and salt until the sugar and eggs are combined. The sugar still won’t all dissolve. If you were worried about such things, you wouldn’t be making this pie, so hush.

Preheat your oven to 450°F/230°C.

Lay a pie crust in a 10” pan add the filling. Wet the edges of the crust with the egg white wash. Place the other 10” crust on top, pressing to seal the edges. Trim the excess dough. Lightly brush the egg while across the top and, using a sharp knife, puncture the top crust only with a dozen or so small slits to let steam escape.

Cook the pie for 15 minutes, turn down the heat to 375°F/190°C and cook another 30 minutes or so until the top is golden brown and the custard is lightly set.

Cool on a wire rack and serve with that fat dollop of cream. Go on, you know you want to.

*Usually I make my own pie crusts, but it's been so frackin' hot I wanted to be in the kitchen as little a possible and cheated by using a box of Trader Joe's frozen crusts. Eh. They're ok. You'll notice that I'm no photographer. I'll make it properly when it cools off. Lord knows I'll run out of the punsch soon enough.


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Swedish Punsch (and Lemon Punsch Pie)

In which Rowley steals a recipe and lays the groundwork for updating an old Shaker classic dessert

(which was posted later that week).

I was skeptical of the boozy tea-and-cardamom flavored liqueur called Swedish punsch (or, punch), mostly because I’m leery of Scandinavian culinary delights such as lutefisk, reindeer, and whale. I shouldn’t have worried. There is aquavit, after all, and a robust home distilling tradition in those frosty northern climes. Plus, I like tea; cardamom can be delicious; and punch usually goes down without a fight.

Final realization? I should have made this long ago.

Given the cardamom and lemon, two flavors that find their way into cookies, pies, and cakes, the recipe also got me thinking about how the spent lemons (used to flavor the spirits) could be incorporated into baking instead of getting pitched once they'd given up their flavor to the punsch.

Now, you could drink this liqueur neat, chilled, but there’s a tradition of using it as a cocktail ingredient that’s a better route. First thing to do (that is, if you can’t find a bottle of the actual stuff) is to score a bottle of Batavia Arrack von Oosten, a Javanese rice-and-sugar cane spirit that is once again available in the US through Haus Alpenz. That will give a noticeable funky character to the final product. Which is good.













For a recipe using the Arrack—please, the Indonesian stuff, not the eastern Mediterranean anise liqueurs—I turned to Erik Ellestad’s Underhill Lounge. Erik’s recipe makes about three liters; a little much for something I’d never tried to make before, so I scaled the recipe to make one liter.

If I had known how good it would be, how fantastic in mixed drinks, I would have gone for the full three-liter batch.

Next time.

Swedish Punsch (one liter yield)

Spirit Base

• 17 oz/500ml El Dorado 5 Year demarara rum
• 8.5 oz/250ml Batavia Arrack van Oosten
• 3 lemons, sliced thinly and seeded

Put the lemon slices, along with any accumulated juice, into a half-gallon non-reactive container with a sealable lid (e.g., a big ol’ Mason or le Parfait preserving jar). Let macerate six hours. Don’t leave it all day or overnight; you don’t want to extract too much of the bitterness from the lemon. It is important to slice the lemons as thinly as possible, say no thicker than a credit card (note that I don't follow my advice in the picture; the pie would've been much more tender had I done so).

Meanwhile, prepare the tea syrup (below) and allow it to cool to room temperature. After six hours, pour the arrack/rum infusion off the lemon slices (don’t squeeze them). Set the enhooched lemon slices aside (you may want to use them to make the lemon punsch pie. If not, pitch 'em, compost 'em, or slop the hogs with them).

Pour the flavored rum mix through a funnel into the one-liter bottle containing the tea syrup. Shake gently to mix and set aside at least one day to mellow.

Tea Syrup

• 8.5 oz/250ml boiling water
• 1 Tbl/6 grams orange pekoe tea
• 2 cardamom pods, crushed
• 1 1/3 cups/280g demarara sugar

Place the dry loose tea and crushed cardamom pods in French press. Heat a small pot of water to the boil, then measure 250ml. Pour this hot water over the tea and cardamom and steep for six minutes.

While tea is steeping, pour sugar through a funnel into a one-liter bottle.

After six minutes, strain the tea (through a coffee filter or a dampened paper towel or cheesecloth if necessary) into the bottle containing the sugar. Seal the bottle and shake the holy living bejesus out of it until the sugar dissolves completely.

To get you started on some tasty drinks, here’s a trio of recipes that use punsch. Try them all and for more recipes, check out cocktaildb.com.

Boomerang
3/4 oz rye (Sazerac)
3/4 oz Swedish punsch
3/4 oz dry vermouth
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 dash fresh lemon juice

Stir in mixing glass with ice & strain.

Doctor Cocktail
2 oz Jamaica rum
1 oz Swedish punsch
1 oz fresh lime juice

Shake in iced cocktail shaker & strain.

~ from Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

100% Cocktail
2 oz Swedish punsch
½ oz fresh orange juice
½ oz fresh lemon juice
One drop of Angostura bitters (for garnish)

Shake punsch and juices with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a single drop of bitters.

~ from Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz’s The Art of the Bar: Cocktail’s Inspired by the Classics

And that pie recipe that uses the spent lemons from the arrack/rum infusion? Hold yer horses. It's coming. [edit: now it's posted]