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Strawberry Punch
Boil a quart of water and two and one-half cups of sugar for about ten minutes, add one cup and a quarter of strawberry juice, and cool. Before freezing add half a cup of Maraschino and it will then not freeze hard. Serve in cups. Anne Warner.
This is a frozen punch — a sweetened fruit ice loosened with liqueur, meant to be spooned or sipped from small cups rather than poured from a bowl. The liqueur is structural, not decorative.
- The hinge: the MaraschinoAlcohol lowers the freezing point, which is exactly why it is added last and why the mixture stays slushy. Leave it out and you get a hard, scrapeable ice; add much more and it may refuse to set.
- What Maraschino means hereA clear cherry liqueur distilled from Marasca cherries and their pits — Luxardo and Maraska are among the brands still made. It is not the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, which will make the punch cloying and pink-flat.
- Syrup boiled ten minutesA quart of water with 2 1/2 cups sugar boiled for ten minutes loses volume and thickens noticeably; how much depends on the pan and the vigour of the boil. A gentle boil leaves more liquid and a softer, less sweet result.
- Strawberry juiceA cup and a quarter of juice takes about 1 1/2 lb of ripe berries, crushed and pressed through a sieve or jelly bag. Purée works but gives a heavier, sherbet-like texture rather than the clear ice intended.
- "Before freezing"At the time this meant packing the mixture into a hand-cranked freezer surrounded by ice and coarse salt. An ice cream machine handles it directly; otherwise freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes until granular.
- Cool completely firstThe recipe adds the juice to the hot syrup and cools afterwards; what matters is that the mixture is cold before the liqueur goes in, since heat drives off both the alcohol and the volatile fruit aroma, which is most of what strawberry juice contributes.
- Yield and servingEnough for eight to ten small punch cups. Serve at once; it slumps quickly at room temperature and does not hold well overnight.
Frozen punches like this one belong to the long formal dinner, where an iced, faintly alcoholic spoonful was served partway through the meal to break the run of rich courses — the best-known version being Roman punch, made with rum. By the turn of the century the form had migrated to luncheons, weddings and receptions, where it functioned as both dessert and drink and where the small cup, rather than the plate, was the point. Maraschino was the fashionable flavouring for such things: an Adriatic cherry liqueur, imported and expensive enough to signal that the hostess had a decent sideboard.