No. 3503

Bouquetiere Punch

Punch a la Bouquetiere

For ten sherbets have one pint of orange water ice (No. 3605) and as much strawberry water ice (No. 3607); mix both together in a freezer with a quarter as much Italian meringue (No. 140); add one gill of maraschino and a quarter of a bottleful of champagne. Procure molds the shape of Fig. 637 and Fig. 639. The latter mold is furnished with a socket three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter in its center, a little higher than the mold. Incrust them well in salted ice and fill Fig. 637 with water whitened with milk, and Fig. 639 with reddened water; after the ice has formed on the sides to an eighth of an inch in thickness empty out the surplus water, dip the mold in hot water and unmold quickly. Place the contents of the mold (Fig. 637) in small blue cardboard boxes and fill them up with the sherbet. Unmold Fig. 639, lay on top of Fig. 637 so that the rounded part be uppermost, fasten a small bunch of natural flowers in the center and then stand them in silver-plated rings and these on silver saucers.

← No. 3502 Beatrice Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3504 Champagne Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a Gilded Age frozen punch course: two water ices lightened with meringue, spiked, and served inside a shell of cast ice with a posy on top. The eating part is simple; the presentation is where the work is.

The hinge: it will never freeze hardThe hinge: it stays soft -- Half a cup of maraschino plus roughly six ounces of champagne in a quart of ice base depresses the freezing point, and the meringue adds air. Churn only to a thick slush and serve at once; it is not a mixture that holds well in storage.
Quantities in plain termsA gill is half a cup. "A quarter of a bottleful" of champagne is about 6 fl oz from a modern 750 ml bottle. The two ices give you a quart, so "a quarter as much" Italian meringue is about 1 cup — folded in, not beaten in.
"Freezer" means the churnRanhofer's freezer is a hand-cranked pail set in ice and rock salt, not a cabinet. Any modern ice cream machine does the job; a stainless bowl in the freezer, stirred hard every fifteen minutes, will also get you to slush.
Italian meringue, not raw whitesNo. 140 is whites whipped with sugar boiled to the soft-ball stage, around 240°F, poured in as a hot syrup. That is what keeps the sherbet smooth and stops it setting to a block, so do not substitute plain beaten whites.
Casting the ice shells"Incrust in salted ice" means burying the mold in crushed ice and rock salt, which runs well below 32°F and freezes a shell against the metal in minutes. A domestic freezer at 0°F will do the same more slowly; check by eye and pour out the unfrozen center when the wall reaches about 1/8 inch.
The molds do not exist any moreThe molds are hard to come by -- Figures 637 and 639 are a plain cup and a domed lid with a central socket for the flower stems. Small metal dariole molds or silicone hemispheres substitute; drill nothing — just leave a gap for the stems when you assemble.
Colouring the water"Water whitened with milk" is exactly that, a splash of milk for opacity; "reddened water" would most likely have been tinted with cochineal or a similar colouring of the period. Any modern food colour works, and a thin ice shell tinted pale reads better than a strong one.
The flowersFlorist blooms carry pesticide residue and some are outright toxic. Use untreated garden flowers you can identify, and treat them as ornament rather than food.
Yield and serviceTen portions; the ices, meringue and liquor come to roughly five ounces apiece — this is an intermediate course, not dessert. It goes to table immediately, in the coldest cups you have.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and this recipe belongs to a course that has almost vanished: the punch or sorbet served midway through a long dinner in the Russian style, after the entrées and before the roast or game, meant to reset the palate and give the guests a pause. Bouquetière is French for a flower girl or flower seller — a term normally attached to a garnish of neatly grouped vegetables, but used here literally, since each portion arrives wearing a bunch of fresh flowers in a socket cast into its ice lid. The blue cardboard box, the plated ring and the silver saucer are as much part of the recipe as the maraschino, and the whole thing is a fair measure of what a Delmonico's pastry department could be asked to do for a single spoonful of frozen wine.