Maraschino Punch

A frozen punch of the kind served between courses or at the end of a long dinner, built on a lemon-and-orange water ice slackened with maraschino liqueur. The method is sound eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ice-making practice, but the finish depends on uncooked egg whites folded into a mixture that is never heated at any stage.

• Why the caution standsThe six whites go in raw and stay raw; nothing in the recipe reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and freezing preserves rather than kills bacteria. The alcohol content of the finished punch is far too low to be relied on as a safeguard. Anyone wanting a frozen punch of this type should work from a current recipe that addresses the egg.
• Maraschino is not the cherry syrupA pint of maraschino here means the clear, dry Dalmatian liqueur distilled from marasca cherries and their stones, sold today under names such as Luxardo. It is nothing like the sweet red syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries, which would push an already very sweet base past eating.
• The sugar is deliberateTwo pounds of sugar to three pints of water is a heavy syrup, roughly a third sugar by weight, high for a plain water ice. The sugar is there to keep the mixture soft against the freezing point, not only to sweeten.
• Freeze means churnIn period ice-making, to "freeze" is to work the mixture in a pail packed with cracked ice and salt until it is the texture of wet snow. A modern churn does the same job, but the alcohol and sugar together will keep the punch slushy; it will not set hard, and it is not meant to.
• Strain before, not afterThe straining step catches lemon and orange pulp, pips and any undissolved sugar. Citrus solids freeze into gritty threads, so this is worth doing through a fine sieve rather than a colander.
• YieldSomething under three quarts before churning, more once the whipped whites are beaten in. That serves upwards of sixteen in the small punch glasses the period used.