English explorers discovered it on their journey to the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century.
How it was prepared
It had five ingredients and was called pañc, which is pronounced more like punch, and is the source of our word.
This word punch first appears in printed works in English referring to India.
The word pañc meant "five". The Indian and Persian words for five originated from the Proto-Indo-European word penk-e, which is also the source of the Greek word pente, the root of pentagon.
The Persian word was panj, which can also be found spelled as punj. We also see these words in Punjab or Panjab, which is a region in northwest India bordering the Indus River to the west and the Yamuna to the east. Punjab translates to "five rivers".
The tavern punch
The punches served in taverns can have any number of different ingredients and are prepared with rum, gin, whisky, brandy, sherry, wine, or any other type of liquor. Some punches even used milk (Brandy Milk Punch remains a Christmas favorite).
The fruits included lemons, limes, pineapples, oranges, or guava jelly. Nutmeg was the spice used most frequently. Sometimes, liqueurs were added, which could serve to replace a spice.
As most school children know punch, of course, has nothing to do with alcoholic drinks.
They know it, instead, as a very sweet mixture of juices or fruit flavors, especially tropical ones. This idea of punch began with Hawaiian Punch, which was developed in 1929.
Hawaiian Punch was a blend of seven concentrated fruit juices, pineapple, orange, passion fruit, apple, apricot, papaya, and guava; and was intended to be used as a fruit topping. All these fruits are found in beautiful Guatemala.
