1916 “Hawaiian Punch” Recipe
Add 2 cups granulated sugar to 2 cups boiling water. Stir until dissolved. Boil 5 minutes. Then cool. Put 2 tablespoons Ceylon tea [leaves] into a pitcher and pour over 1 quart boiling water. Let stand 15 minutes. Strain this into the cooled syrup. Now add a can of grated pineapple, the juice of 6 lemons and 5 oranges, a pint of any fruit juice and a quart of fresh berries. In the bottom of the bowl put a few crushed and bruised mint leaves and a nice block of ice. Fill up with Apollonaris [sparkling mineral water].
1916 “Hawaiian Punch” is the earliest reference I found for a drink with that name. The 1916 Hawaiian Punch recipe was from “A. E.” from College City, who won 2nd prize for “Hawaiian Punch” in a California contest. The commercial brand we know, trademarked Hawaiian Punch, originated in 1934, and can be profoundly good tasting if you’re in the mood with the right company–memories! As an aside, how can a company trademark the name of a recipe? Isn’t that like trademarking “meat loaf?” I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer.
The “Hawaiian Punch” Wikipedia article ignores earlier drinks with that name and just mentions the store-bought brand– perhaps justly so, as the earlier drinks were tea-based, and the drink we know today as Hawaiian Punch is not. Today’s Hawaiian Punch started as an ice-cream syrup in 1934. It has it’s own recipe, no tea, and contained orange, pineapple, passion fruit, guava and papaya. So there’s no need to correct the wiki article, right? Different Hawaiian Punch, different recipe, right?
In a 1924 booklet “Ninety-nine tempting Pineapple Treats” [Reddit link] the recipe is a tea-based drink. Earlier than that, in 1918 “Hawaiian Punch” was a drink (recipe unknown) that became more popular as Prohibition rolled in. Prohibition helped develop the original Hawaiian Punch — no big surprise there!
