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PUNCH (a la Romaine, Iced)
Take the juice of two China oranges, and a glassful each of rum and champagne, and mix them with a pint and a half of lemon-water ice. Freeze in the usual way. Beat up half a pound of powdered sugar with the frothed whites of two eggs, add this to the rest, with half a pint of brandy, a bottle of champagne, and a cup of green tea. Stir the mixture briskly into the ice until it liquefies. If it is too thick to pour out, add a little water, a little more champagne, or a little syrup. For the punch to be perfect the quantity of ice must be proportioned to the liquid. It should be smooth and white, like thick cream, and should be served in champagne glasses.
A frozen punch of the sort served between courses rather than after dinner. It is essentially lemon sorbet let down with spirits, wine and meringue, and the whole thing hinges on temperature: too warm and it is a cocktail, too cold and it will not pour.
- China orangesOrdinary sweet oranges, as opposed to the bitter Seville. Two will give roughly 1/2 cup of juice.
- "A glassful"Genuinely ambiguous here. In Victorian drink recipes it usually means a wineglass, about 2 fl oz, but the book does not say; treat it as 2 fl oz of rum and 2 fl oz of champagne and adjust.
- Lemon-water iceA water ice made with lemon juice, sugar and water and no dairy — a lemon sorbet. A pint and a half is 30 fl oz on imperial measure, so a standard pint tub of good lemon sorbet plus half again, or a little more.
- Powdered sugarIn British usage of this period, finely ground granulated sugar, closer to modern caster than to icing sugar. Half a pound is a great deal on top of an already sweet sorbet; a quarter pound is nearer modern taste.
- Raw egg whitesThe frothed whites are never cooked. Use pasteurised whites, and skip the dish entirely for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised.
- The green teaA cup of strong brewed green tea, cooled. Tea is a common component of Victorian punches, and its tannin would cut the sugar and spirit here; the book itself gives no reason for it.
- Freezing and alcoholA bottle of champagne plus a glassful more, with half a pint of brandy and a glassful of rum, will not freeze solid at domestic freezer temperatures. Freeze the sorbet base hard first, then work the spirits and meringue in cold and serve at once; the target is thick pouring cream, as the text says.
- YieldWith a full bottle of champagne and half a pint of brandy this makes something over two quarts, enough to fill a good many small champagne glasses. It does not keep; serve it as soon as it is mixed, before the foam falls.
Punch à la Romaine belongs to the Victorian and Edwardian habit of serving a frozen, spiked ice midway through a long dinner, after the entrées and before the roast, to reset the palate — the sorbet or rum sorbet course. Its best-known appearance is on the first-class dinner menu of the Titanic's final evening, which has kept the name in circulation long after the course itself vanished. The word punch is generally traced to the Hindi pānch, five, for the five components of the original spirit-citrus-sugar-water-spice drink brought back by East India Company men; by the time Cassell's compiled this dictionary the term covered almost any mixed bowl, and the Roman version had drifted a long way from five ingredients. It was understood as a course, made by a cook with an ice pail, rather than a drink mixed at the sideboard.