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PUNCH (a la Victoria)
To a pint of clarified sugar, mix the juice of half a dozen lemons and two China oranges, with the rind of two lemons rubbed off on a lump or two of sugar. Strain when the sugar has dissolved, and freeze. Take the mixture out of the ice-pot, add equal quantities of brandy and rum, and beat up the whites of three eggs with a quarter of a pound of sugar to a stiff froth. Mix it gently with the rest, and put again to freeze.
This is a frozen punch — a spirituous water ice with meringue folded through, meant to be served in glasses rather than eaten with a spoon. The hinge is the alcohol: add it after the base is frozen, as the original directs, and keep the quantity restrained or the mixture will never set at all.
- Clarified sugarA pint (2 cups) of sugar syrup boiled and clarified with egg white or a little beaten white and skimmed. A plain heavy syrup — roughly equal weights sugar and water, boiled briefly — is the modern equivalent; the clarifying step existed to remove impurities from nineteenth-century loaf sugar and is no longer needed.
- China orangesOrdinary sweet oranges, as opposed to the bitter Seville oranges used for marmalade. Two of them, juiced.
- Rubbing rind on sugarRubbing the lemon zest off onto lumps of sugar makes what is now called an oleo-saccharum: the sugar draws out the peel oil and gives far more aroma than grated zest. Let the sugar lumps sit in the juice until dissolved, then strain.
- The ice-potA pewter sorbetière set in a pail of ice and salt, scraped and churned by hand. An ice-cream machine does the same work; failing that, freeze in a shallow metal tray and break the mixture up with a fork every 30 minutes.
- An unmeasured quantity of spirits"Equal quantities of brandy and rum" gives no amount, and the ambiguity matters here because alcohol depresses the freezing point. Keep the total quantity of spirits restrained for a batch this size; much more and it will stay liquid however long it is left.
- Raw egg whiteThe meringue is folded in cold and never cooked. Use pasteurised whites, which whip perfectly well, and keep the finished punch below freezing until it is served.
- Sugar in the meringueA quarter of a pound is a generous half cup. Beat it in gradually once the whites hold soft peaks so the froth stays stiff, then fold rather than stir — the air is what gives this its characteristic slushy, foamed body.
- Yield and serviceA quart or more once the froth is folded in, enough for eight to ten small glasses. It will not hold its texture in a domestic freezer for long; serve it soft, within an hour or two of the second freezing, spooned into chilled stemware.
Frozen punch belongs to the formal Victorian and Edwardian banquet, where an iced, spirit-laced sorbet was served between the heavy courses — most famously as punch à la Romaine, which appeared on the first-class dinner menu aboard the Titanic. Cassell's version borrows the Queen's name, a common flattery in cookery books of the period, applied freely to soups, puddings and sandwiches as well as ices. The word punch itself is generally traced to Hindi and Persian roots meaning five, for the five components of the original spirit-sugar-citrus-water-spice drink brought back by East India Company men in the seventeenth century; by the time this book was compiled, punch had long since branched into hot, cold and frozen forms, and the frozen kind was firmly the property of the dessert cook rather than the bar.