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PUNCH (a la Reine)
Rub the rind of two large fresh lemons with three or four large lumps of sugar till the zest is taken off. Squeeze out and strain the juice of six lemons and two oranges, and add three-quarters of a pound of sugar, dissolved in as much water as will moisten it, and half a pint of water. Freeze the mixture. Stir into the ice a glassful of rum and a glassful of brandy, and freeze again. Whisk the whites of three eggs to a solid froth, and beat up with them four ounces of pounded sugar. Stir this into the ice and serve.
A frozen punch of the sort served in small glasses between courses rather than drunk from a cup. Nearly everything here depends on managing sugar, alcohol and air, all three of which resist freezing.
- The hinge: freeze in stagesAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so the spirits go in only after the base is already frozen firm, exactly as written. Add them at the start and you will get a cold slurry that never sets.
- "A glassful"Probably a wineglass, about 2 fl oz, giving roughly 4 fl oz of spirits in total; the recipe does not define the measure. A tumbler-sized reading would likely leave the mixture too alcoholic to set.
- Rubbing the rindSugar lumps dragged over lemon peel absorb the oil from the zest — the old oleo-saccharum. A microplaned zest muddled into the sugar and left twenty minutes does much the same job, though the lumps are traditionally reckoned more thorough, the abrasion helping to release the oil.
- Freezing without a pailThe original assumed a sorbetière packed in ice and salt, turned and scraped by hand. An ice-cream machine is a straight substitute; failing that, freeze in a shallow metal tray and break it up with a fork every twenty minutes.
- Sugar quantityThree-quarters of a pound in the base plus four ounces beaten into the whites is a great deal of sugar by current taste, but much of it is structural — it keeps the ice soft and spoonable. Cutting it substantially will give you a solid block.
- The egg whitesWhisked whites folded into a part-frozen ice make what confectioners called a spoom: lighter, paler, almost foamy. They are never cooked here, so use pasteurised whites if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised.
- Yield and serviceRoughly a quart, enough for six to eight small glasses. It is a palate cleanser, served in chilled coupes or punch glasses partway through a long dinner, not a dessert portion.
Frozen punches belong to the elaborate Victorian dinner, where a small glass of iced spirit was served between the heavy roast courses to revive appetites — a survival of the older sorbet course. The best-known member of the family is punch à la romaine, and the various royal and regional names attached to these ices (à la reine, à la romaine, à la cardinal) generally indicate small differences in the spirits and the garnish rather than any documented connection to a court or city. What distinguishes this version is the meringue: whisked whites beaten with sugar and stirred into the frozen base produce the light, foamy texture that nineteenth-century confectioners called a spoom, a word usually linked to Italian spuma, foam, though the derivation is not certain. The ice depends on the fact that sugar and alcohol both resist freezing.