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Tokay Punch (Out of pounds of Tokay grapes)
Out of 6 pounds of Tokay grapes select 1 pound to be put into the punch last. Now make a boiling syrup of three pounds of sugar and 1 quart of water and pour this over the remaining 5 pounds of grapes. When partly cold, rub it through a sieve, leaving skin and seeds behind, then add the juice of 2 oranges and 2 lemons, and 1 quart of St. Julien claret, then strain and freeze. Before serving add 1 pint of good brandy and an Italian meringue paste of 6 egg whites, colored a nice red, and drop in the remaining grapes.
A frozen fountain punch built like a punch à la Romaine: a heavy grape-and-claret sorbet base lightened with meringue and spiked at the last moment. Most of the work is in getting the grape pulp through a sieve while it is still warm.
- Sieve it warm, not coldSieve it while it is still warm -- "When partly cold" is the hinge. Cold pulp is harder to push through and clings to the skins and seeds, so work it through a medium sieve before it cools to room temperature.
- Tokay grapesIn American commerce of this period this generally meant Flame Tokay, the crisp seeded pink-red table grape shipped in quantity from Lodi, California. It is rare in shops now. Red Globe is the closest substitute: seeded, firm, mildly sweet.
- St. Julien claretSaint-Julien is a commune in the Médoc, so this is a dry red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic Cabernet-based red does the job; avoid anything oaky or jammy, which fights the fresh grape.
- How sweet, and whyThree pounds of sugar to a quart of water is a very heavy syrup by modern taste, but it is doing structural work. The sugar and the quart of wine depress the freezing point (the brandy goes in only after freezing), and cutting the sugar will tend to give you a hard, icy block instead of a spoonable punch.
- "Freeze" means slushThis would have gone into an ice-cream freezer and come out at about the texture of wet snow. In a domestic machine expect a soft granita; a still-freeze in a shallow pan, scraped with a fork every 30 minutes, works as well. With this much sugar and wine it will stay soft, and it is not meant to set firm.
- The meringueItalian meringue means whipping the six whites while streaming in sugar syrup cooked to about 240F. That hot syrup partly cooks the whites but does not reliably pasteurize them; use pasteurized whites if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant, or immune-compromised. Fold it in off the heat, just before the punch goes out.
- Colored a nice redPeriod red colorings ranged from cochineal/carmine to the newer coal-tar dyes. A spoonful of reduced beet juice or a hibiscus infusion will tint the meringue pink.
- Order of operationsBrandy and meringue both go in after freezing. Add the brandy earlier and the base may not freeze at all; add the meringue earlier and the churning collapses it.
- YieldA gallon or more finished, depending on how much air the meringue and the churning add; somewhere in the region of two to three dozen punch-cup servings.
The American Soda Book belongs to a run of trade manuals written for the men behind the marble counter, and its frozen punches sit at the point where the drugstore fountain overlapped with the banquet table. A punch of this shape — folded with meringue and finished with spirit — descends from punch à la Romaine, the frozen course served midway through nineteenth-century formal dinners to reset the palate before the roast. The Tokay in the title is Flame Tokay, a California table grape that had little to do with the Hungarian wine region of the same name — cheap and abundant enough that a fountain man could contemplate using six pounds of it in one bowl.