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Recipe

Christmas Bowl of Bishop

100 min • 4 to 6 servings •
Eric Felten
Steaming bowl of spiced mulled wine with floating orange slices, cloves, cinnamon sticks, star anise, and dark berries on a kitchen counter.

For Charles Dickens, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a steaming bowl of punch.

“A Merry Christmas, Bob!” says the reformed Scrooge to Bob Cratchit, as he claps him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob!”

To make a bowl of Bishop, start by studding a couple of lemons or oranges with a half dozen cloves each and roast the fruit in an oven until they are browned. Cut the fruit in half and put in a saucepan with mulling spices and about a half pint of water. Boil about half the water away before adding a decent bottle of ruby port into the pan; heat it slowly until it steams, but don’t let it boil.

Ready

  • 2 lemons
  • ½ pint of water
  • 12 cloves
  • 1 Bottle ruby port
  • ¼ cup sugar, more or less, to taste

    • Mulling Spices

  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1 Tbsp whole allspice berries
  • 1 small thumb of ginger
  • 1 tsp star anise
  • 1 tsp allspice
  • 1 tsp mace
  • (don’t use powdered spices, which will make the drink sludgy)

    • Set

  • Roasting pan
  • Sauce pot

    • Go!

  • Stud to whole lemons with with a half dozen cloves each.
  • Roast the lemons for half and hour, more or less, in a [oven 350f] degree oven.
  • Cut the roasted lemons n half and put them in a saucepan with half a pint of water and whole mulling spices, such as cinnamon, allspice, ginger, mace, and star anise. (Don’t use powdered spices, which will make the drink sludgy.)
  • Boil off a little of the water before adding the port, and sugar to taste.
  • Be sure not to boil the wine, but let it steep just below a simmer for an hour.
  • If the punch is too strong, add a little more wate.
  • Serve steaming in punch cups or London dock glasses.

    • Recommendations

    In Dickens’s London, Bishop would have been made with clove-studded oranges; it was up at Oxford where the taste ran to roasted lemons with port. I much prefer the Oxonian version, as roasting brings out the bitterness in oranges but takes the sour edge off of lemons.
    For a more progressive version of this cocktail try Bishop on the Rocks
    This recipe and text are reprinted from the book “How’s Your Cocktail?” with the permission of the author.

    Christmas Dickens Eric Felten port punch Scrooge

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