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Roman Punch
Three cups sugar, two quarts water, juice of two lemons and two oranges brought to a boiling point, three tablespoons rum. Freeze according to directions.
COUP ST. JACQUES-Fill champagne glasses with the recipe for Fruit Salad, No. 1. Over the top spread a thick layer of lemon ice, decorating the center with one Maraschino cherry, and four leaves of angelica radiating from it.
A rum sorbet meant to be served mid-dinner rather than as dessert, plus a note on dressing it up in a coupe. The proportions are sound; only the freezing method and the handling of the alcohol need translating.
- The hinge: how much rumThree tablespoons in two and a half quarts of syrup is deliberately restrained. Alcohol depresses the freezing point, and much more than this will leave you with slush that never sets in a domestic machine. Resist the urge to make it boozier.
- Don't boil the juiceBoiling the juice — as written, the sugar, water and citrus juice all go to the boiling point together. If you would rather keep the fresh citrus aroma, add the juice and the rum to the syrup off the heat; note that this is a departure from the original instruction, not an interpretation of it.
- "Freeze according to directions"This refers the reader to the book's own freezing instructions: a hand-crank freezer packed with cracked ice and rock salt, commonly around three parts ice to one part salt, cranked until stiff. Chill the mixture thoroughly first, then churn in an ice-cream machine; expect a loose, spoonable texture rather than a scoopable one.
- RipeningOld freezers were repacked in salt and ice and left to firm for an hour or two before serving. The modern equivalent is transferring the churned ice to a chilled container and holding it in the freezer for an hour before serving.
- AngelicaCandied stems of Angelica archangelica, sold in bright green batons and once as common a garnish as candied citron. Still available from baking suppliers; strips of candied citrus peel or thin slices of pistachio stand in for the radiating leaf pattern.
- Coupe St. Jacques"Champagne glasses" here are the shallow coupe, not the flute, which is what makes the layered fruit and ice visible. The Fruit Salad No. 1 referenced is a separate recipe in the same book; any macerated mixed fruit works, drained so it does not water the ice.
- Yield and serviceAbout two and a half quarts. Roman punch was poured or spooned into small glasses as a separate course partway through the dinner, not eaten as dessert.
Roman punch belongs to the formal Victorian and Edwardian dinner as the sorbet course, a half-frozen, lightly spirituous ice served partway through the meal to refresh the palate before the roast or game. The name is generally traced to punch à la romaine, a French restaurant preparation that in its fuller form folded Italian meringue into the frozen syrup and used rum with white wine or champagne; the Butterick version is the stripped-down American household descendant, with the egg white dropped and the rum reduced to a flavouring. It had a long run on state and banquet menus in the United States through the late nineteenth century, which is part of why a general-purpose domestic cookbook felt obliged to include it. The Coupe St. Jacques appended here is a different animal entirely, a fruit-and-ice dessert of the same era whose presentation, layered in a stemmed glass with a maraschino cherry and green angelica, tells you a good deal about what the period considered elegant.