Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. gin and bitters.

1733		Fielding Don Quixote III i: Besides other Articles she ran in tick Twenty Shillings for Thunder and Lightning.
1812		Spirit of Irish Wit 211: Having tipped off three or four glasses of thunder and lightning (i.e. gin and bitters)’.
1823		[C.M. Westmacott] Mammon in London 1 62: An old lady fall down in a fit after swallowing a bumper of thunder and lightning.
1834		Nat. Standard of Lit. 11 Jan. 31/1: He liquors on a glass of ‘thunder and lightning" that’s hotter than Tophet and bites like a rattlesnake.
1836		A. Thornton Don Juan in London II 86: My conscience again took alarm on seeing an old lady fall down in a fit after drinking a glass of ‘Thunder and Lightning’, called by common-place people ‘Gin and Bitters.’.
1859		‘Scene in a London Flash-Panny’ Matsell Vocabulum 100: Another fair damsel [...] emphatically declared, that if the tenant in possession did not immediately leave that, she would astonish her mazzard with the contents of a ‘nipper-kin of thunder and lightning.’.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 1227: C.19–early 20.

2. (Irish) a mixture of shrub and whisky.

1821		‘A Real Paddy’ Real Life in Ireland 39: The tavern doors were thronged with visitors, who [...] paid a tribute to the excise in a roller of thunder and lightning, alias shrub and whiskey.
1997		Share Slanguage.

3. a mixture of rough Spanish wines, found in Gibraltar.

1896

Regiment 13 June 168/3: The ‘Rock’ a Century Ago [...] There were two kinds of beverage in fashion —‘black strap’—a rough Catalonian wine of some body, and a sweet, druggy, Malaga white wine ; the junction of these was poetically denominated ‘thunder and lightning’.

4. treacle and clotted cream.

1937–84

Partridge DSUE (1984) 1227: —1880.

5. brandy sauce when ignited.

1905

J. Wright EDD VI 128/2: Thunder, Thunder-and-lightning, (a) brandy-sauce when ignited .