Punch Drunk?

Remember how last week I wrote about how I was going to make a super classy brandy punch for my cookie exchange party for a ton of strangers I'd never met?  Here was the recipe from the Savoy Cocktail Book:

Juice of 15 Lemons

Juice of 4 Oranges
1 1/4 pounds Powdered Sugar
1/2 pt. Curacao
1 Glass Grenadine
2 Qts. Brandy
1 to 2 Qts. Sparkling Water

Seems easy enough, right?  Mmmhmmm.  Well, we had a few issues with it.  Surprisingly, none of the issues had to do with the quantity of brandy:

That's a fair amount of alcohol, wouldn't you say?

Okay, so the problem with this recipe is that the cocktail book was written in the 1920's and my hunch is that both grenadine and curacao have changed a bit since then.  Why do I think this?  Because I have my doubts that this is what The Savoy served back in the day:

My theory is that back in the 1920's, curacao probably wasn't a violent blue color.  No idea what color it was, but I think if the recipe had called for triple sec, the punch would have been a pretty reddish color instead of a weird greenish/bluish/brown.

My second theory is that grenadine must have had a lot less sugar back in the day.  The 1 and 1/4 POUND(!) of powdered sugar seems like (and is) a LOT.  With the amount of sugar already in the punch, the powdered sugar didn't dissolve fully, so when I stirred the punch, it became really cloudy, so then I was left with a cloudy, brownish/bluish/greenish punch, which I still totally served.  Happy holidays everyone!

It still tasted fantastic but next time I make this, I'll use triple sec instead of blue curacao and start with 1/2 pound of powdered sugar and add from there.