I recently went down one of those inexplicable rabbit holes, one dictated by an algorithm that somehow intuited that I love cooking and history. I found myself watching a video of what President Andrew Jackson might have eaten on an average day, a meal exactly as you might have expected: early 1800s American fare, most of it a hard pass. The lunch of boiled fish in savory gelatin made me gag ever so slightly, and the side of fried okra wasn’t much better. Dinner was an improvement: duck leg with a Southern Jezebel sauce accompanied by what the narrator referred to as “Daniel Webster Punch.”
Come again?
I was stunned. As a true son of Dartmouth, I felt I knew just about all that could be known about our famous alum. Webster, class of 1801, was one of the greatest orators in U.S. history and a defender of the Constitution who argued and won the legendary Dartmouth College case before the U.S. Supreme Court. He served with distinction as a congressman, senator, and secretary of state for three (three!) different presidents—but a namesake punch? That was definitely news to me. I resolved to get to the bottom of this mystery and make some of the punch, if only to better understand my alma mater and her early graduates.
During my time in the 1980s, there weren’t many bespoke punches to be found on the Hanover Plain. Sure, Phi “reds” were notorious, as was Bones Gate tea, but that was about it. As many might recall, undergrads’ cocktails were not sophisticated beverages. They were typically mixed in a large plastic garbage can (occasionally with a liner), then scooped into plastic cups and promptly handed to whomever was next in line. It seems shocking that in four years I never came across a Webster’s punch, but perhaps the kegs of Busch were simply cheaper to source than bottles of hard alcohol—which was still allowed on campus then—or maybe they ran out of trash bags.
The first instance of Daniel Webster punch appears in The Steward and Barkeep’s Manual, published in 1869, 17 years after the esteemed senator passed away—from cirrhosis of the liver. Currently, quite a few recipes are available online, each slightly more perplexing than the last but all with several constants: oleo saccharum (lemon syrup), black tea, lemon juice, cognac, oloroso (dry Spanish sherry), Jamaican dark rum, Bordeaux, and champagne or prosecco.
There are also orange slices, pineapples, and star anise involved, but by this point, are you even paying attention? It’s as if someone opened their bar, saw what was left inside the half-empty bottles, and thought, “Yeah, let’s do that—and to be safe, let’s add some black tea to balance it all out.” Honestly, with the potent mix of stimulants and depressants, it comes across as a Federalist version of Four Loko, the infamous alcoholic energy drink from the early 2000s that was banned in many states.
The taste is about what you would expect if you had mixed together most of your liquor cabinet.”
First up, I made the oleo saccharum, which is Latin for “oily sugar.” Muddle lemon peels with sugar to let the essential lemon oils seep out but be careful to avoid the white of the rind or inner peel. The rind is death—or at least tastes like it. After you’ve made the oleo saccharum, it’s mostly just dumping different bottles of alcohol into a punch bowl. Some recipes call for four tea bags, others just one, depending on how late you want to be up after dinner, I suppose.
Once mixed, the finished product has an opaque, rusty crimson hue, the cloudiness from the lemon juice aptly reminiscent of a storm on the horizon. The taste is about what you would expect if you had mixed together most of your liquor cabinet; it is sweet without being cloying, the notes from the fortified wines predominating, and the black tea catching up with you at the finish. The punch comes across as a heavier, more robust sangria, a ruby sledgehammer of a brew, able to fell the bravest of foes. It is, as Webster once was, fierce and uncompromising, often headache inducing, a potent drink that gives one the courage to wage fierce oratory battles.
During this gastronomic journey, I learned an important truth: The punch is not the point—the attribution is. It is hard not to see this concoction in the context of the man, namely, a brave amalgamation of potent forces, a resourceful interpretation of the facts or, in this case, the liquors at hand. It matters not whether it is his creation but rather that his legacy was enough to inspire it. John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay might have seen more success in the U.S. Senate, but I don’t believe they ever had a drink named after them. Daniel Webster did.
A few years ago, I served on a jury in a historic 1800s courthouse in Newburyport, Massachusetts. As we were ushered into the courtroom, the judge mentioned that Daniel Webster had once argued cases in that very room. Upon hearing that, my college pride made me sit up a little straighter and listen more closely to the arguments about disrupted telecom lines in Gloucester. Had I known about Webster’s punch, I just might have ended each day with a wee spot of it in honor of the man who helped mold our modern legal system and, on occasion, our cocktail menu.
J. Mark Riddell wrote “Window to the Past” (May/June 2025).
