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Punch in Surprise
Have six different fancy moulds, resembling in shape an apple, pear, banana, tomato, pineapple and peach. Fill a tin pan with ice well mixed with rock salt, lay on it the six moulds, opened flat, fill them with cold water, also the pan to half its height, and let them remain for half an hour, feeling the interiors of the mould to ascertain whether a crust adheres to them. Have in readiness any kind of punch; take up each mould separately, empty out the water, fill one after another with the punch, close tightly, and lay them in a pail previously prepared with broken ice and rock salt at the bottom; cover with a liberal allowance of extra ice and salt, and let them freeze for an hour. Have ready a cold dish with a folded napkin over it; pour some warm water into a vessel, take up each mould separately, dip it into the water and quickly wash off any ice or salt that may adhere; turn them out carefully, place them on a dish and send to the table.
This is a piece of showmanship rather than cookery: a hollow shell of clear ice, cast in a fruit-shaped mould, then filled with punch and frozen solid. Nothing needs updating in the method, but several assumptions behind it do.
- The hinge: alcohol will not freezeThe hinge: alcohol depresses the freezing point -- A punch heavy with spirit will stay slush no matter how long it sits in the brine. The lower the spirit content the better your chances of a solid centre; much above roughly a sixth of the total volume and the shell is likely to be the only frozen part, and it will leak when unmoulded.
- How the shell formsWater in contact with the chilled metal freezes inward from the surface. The instruction to feel the interior after half an hour is the whole test — you want a crust perhaps a quarter inch thick, then you pour off the still-liquid centre to leave a hollow.
- Ice and rock saltCoarse salt mixed through broken ice drives the bath well below freezing, into the range of 0 to 10F. Use roughly one part salt by weight to six or eight parts ice, and repack as it melts. A modern chest freezer at 0F will do the same work more slowly and with less mess.
- The mouldsOscar means hinged pewter or block-tin ice moulds in fruit shapes, which turn up in antique shops and rarely elsewhere. Two-part silicone or polycarbonate moulds work, though metal conducts far better and gives a cleaner shell.
- "Close tightly"Punch expands as it freezes. Leave a little headroom and expect seepage at the seam; the old moulds were clamped, and a rubber band or two around a modern mould serves the same purpose.
- The warm-water dipA second or two only. Longer and the fruit loses its moulded detail, and any salt left clinging to the outside will taste unmistakably of brine.
- ServingThe folded napkin absorbs meltwater and stops the fruit sliding on the dish. Serve immediately; these are a course in themselves, one per person, at the point in a long menu where the punch course fell, before the roast.
Frozen punch served between courses was a fixture of the long formal dinner in Europe and America through the nineteenth century, seen as a pause rather than a dessert: something cold and sharp to reset the palate before the roast.