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Lenox Punch
½ tumbler currant jelly Ice 1 cup orange juice ⅔ cup lemon juice 2 bottles ginger ale 1/3 cup brandy Make a syrup by boiling sugar and water fifteen minutes. Add jelly, and, as soon as dissolved, add a piece of ice to cool mixture; then add fruit juices, ale, and brandy. Color red, freeze to a mush, serve in glasses, and insert in each glass a small sprig of holly with berries.
A frozen punch of the sort served mid-meal rather than as a drink, and the printing here is defective: the sugar and water for the syrup are named in the method but their quantities never appear in the list. Read the notes below before shopping.
- Omit the hollyHolly berries and leaves are toxic if eaten, and a sprig standing in a glass of slush is an easy thing for a child to chew. Garnish with a mint sprig, a cranberry skewer or a twist of orange peel instead.
- The missing syrupNo amounts are given for the sugar and water. For a mixture with 2½ cups of citrus juice, a syrup of about 2 cups sugar to 2 cups water is in the right range; boiling fifteen minutes will reduce it and concentrate it further. Taste before freezing, since it should be distinctly sweeter than you want the finished ice to taste.
- Half a tumbler of jellyA period tumbler is roughly 8 ounces, so this is about ½ cup of currant jelly. Warm it into the hot syrup and stir until no lumps remain; red currant jelly is still sold, and a good-quality one carries most of the color the recipe later asks you to add.
- Two bottles of ginger aleBottled ginger ale of the period came in a range of sizes, from small splits to pint bottles, so the intended volume is uncertain; something in the region of 24 ounces total suits the volume of juice here. Since the sweetness of the ginger ale you use is unknown to the recipe, hold back some of the syrup until you have tasted the whole mixture.
- Citrus quantitiesA cup of orange juice is about 3 large oranges; 1½ cups of lemon juice is 10 to 12 lemons and is deliberately sharp, since sweetness reads flat once frozen.
- Color redThe colouring would most likely have been cochineal or a prepared commercial colouring. Beet juice or a few drops of modern food coloring will do, and with a well-colored jelly you may not need either.
- Freeze to a mushTreat it as a granita rather than a smooth ice. Freeze in a shallow metal pan and rake with a fork every 30 to 40 minutes. The brandy and the sugar both depress the freezing point, so it stays slushy for a long time and will take several hours; in a modern freezer it will eventually firm up, so rake it and serve it rather than leaving it overnight.
- Yield and serviceAbout 2 quarts before freezing, enough for 10 to 12 small punch glasses. Serve it in the middle of a long dinner or alongside roast game, and serve it immediately, as it slumps quickly in a warm room.
Frozen punches of this kind descend from the Roman punch of nineteenth-century service, a half-frozen, spirit-laced ice passed between the roast and the game to refresh the palate partway through a long dinner. By the time such recipes reached home cooks, the form had migrated into home entertaining. The name is often said to nod to Lenox, Massachusetts, the Berkshire resort town whose summer cottagers were part of the Boston social world the school served; naming punches, salads and creams after fashionable places was standard practice in American cookbooks of the period, and such names rarely record an actual origin. The holly garnish marks it as a Christmas dish, and the currant jelly is telling too.