Home › At the Fountain › Cider Punch (Chip the thin yellow rind) (II)
Cider Punch (Chip the thin yellow rind) (II)
Chip the thin yellow rind from a lemon, bruise it slightly and add a cup of sherry wine. Let it stand an hour. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon and 2 stand an hour. Squeeze the juice of 1 lemon and 2 oranges over ½ cups of granulated sugar, add a quart of cider that has a slight "nip," then pour over the lemon rind and sherry. Turn into a freezer and freeze same as water ice. Serve in glasses and over each pour a teaspoonful of brandy spoonful of brandy.
A frozen punch rather than a poured drink: the fruit and cider go into an ice-cream freezer and come out as a coarse slush, dressed with brandy at the glass. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the quantities in the original need interpreting.
- The sugar quantity is unclearThe text reads "½ cups of granulated sugar," with the whole number lost. For a quart of cider plus a cup of sherry, something in the region of 1 to 1½ cups would suit a punch meant to be frozen, though that is an inference rather than a figure the book gives. Start at the low end and taste before freezing.
- Cider means hard cider"A slight nip" is the period's way of saying the cider has begun to ferment and carries a little alcohol and acid. Modern unfermented apple cider or juice will give a flat, sweet result; use a dry hard cider.
- Chip, do not grateChipping the thin yellow rind means paring it off with a knife or peeler in strips, taking no white pith. Bruising the strips releases the oil, and the hour in sherry is an infusion — the point is perfumed wine, not lemon pulp.
- Freezing without an ice-cream freezer"Freeze same as water ice" means churning in a bucket freezer until it is a firm slush. A modern ice-cream machine works, or freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 minutes for two to three hours.
- It will never freeze hardBetween the sherry, the cider and the sugar there is enough alcohol and dissolved solids that the mixture stays soft. That is intended; expect a spoonable granita, not a scoopable sorbet.
- Strain before freezingThe recipe does not say to, but it is worth lifting out the rind strips and any lemon and orange pips before the mixture goes into the freezer; the flavour is already in the sherry, and the strips are awkward in the churn.
- YieldRoughly a quart and a half of finished ice; how many glasses that fills depends entirely on their size. The teaspoon of brandy goes on at the moment of serving so it does not freeze into the body of the ice.
Frozen punches — a fruit-and-wine mixture churned in the same freezer that produced water ices — were served in American households and hotels through the nineteenth century, often between courses at a long dinner rather than as dessert, on the theory that something cold and acidic revived the appetite. Cider punch is generally associated with English usage, where cider stood in for a more expensive wine base.