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Maraschino Punch
Take the grated rind of 2 lemons and the juice of 6, 2 quarts of water and 2 pounds of sugar, prepare in the same manner as lemon water ice. When in the same manner as lemon water ice. When nearly frozen, add the meringue mixture of 2 egg whites, and last I good gill of maraschino. This punch may be made of ordinary lemon water ice with an addition of the necessary maraschino flavoring and an egg white mixture of 3 whites to every 2 quarts of lemon ice.
This is a frozen punch in the punch à la romaine family — a lemon water ice loosened with meringue and spiked at the last moment. The verbatim text repeats a line ("When in the same manner as lemon water ice. When nearly frozen"), a typesetting slip in the original.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. "A good gill" means a generous one, so pour a scant half cup and taste.
- Maraschino means the liqueurNot the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. Maraschino is a clear, roughly 30 percent ABV cherry-pit liqueur (Luxardo is the standard bottling). The "maraschino flavoring" in the second half of the recipe is most likely the non-alcoholic fountain syrup rather than the liqueur, though the text does not say so.
- Add the alcohol last, and mean itAdd the alcohol last -- Alcohol depresses the freezing point, and a gill of liqueur on top of an already heavily sugared base will keep the punch soft; stir it in when the ice is nearly set, then harden in the freezer, and expect a soft, spoonable texture rather than a scoopable one.
- The syrup base2 lb sugar to 2 quarts water with the juice of 6 lemons: dissolve the sugar in the water warm, steep the grated rind in it, then strain and chill thoroughly before churning.
- "Meringue mixture"Recipes of this period often meant whites whipped with hot sugar syrup, an Italian meringue, folded in to lighten the ice, though the text does not specify. Making it that way also settles the food-safety question; pasteurized whites work if you prefer to beat them cold.
- ChurningAny modern ice cream machine handles this; the original assumed a hand-cranked pail packed with ice and salt. The meringue does the work a modern stabilizer would, so fold it in gently and do not over-churn afterward.
- YieldSomething over two and a half quarts once the sugar is dissolved and the meringue folded in — roughly 12 to 16 servings in punch glasses. Serve in stemmed glasses with a spoon, as a between-courses ice or a hot-weather drink.
Frozen punch of this kind reached American soda fountains by way of the French kitchen, where punch à la romaine — a lemon ice slackened with meringue and rum — was served as an entremet at long formal dinners, most often before the roast. Maraschino was the fashionable substitute: a clear cherry liqueur distilled from the marasca cherry, pits and all, and long associated with Zara on the Dalmatian coast, which is why nineteenth-century American recipes so often specify it by name for anything meant to seem continental. Its appearance in a fountain manual is worth noting, since the trade's alcohol-free reputation belongs to the Prohibition years that followed; before that, spirits were not necessarily out of place at the fountain, and the recipe's second sentence — the same ice built from plain lemon water ice and bottled maraschino flavoring — shows how easily the fountain could work either side of that line.