No. 3505

Coffee Punch; Granite Punch with Coffee

Punch an Cafe; Punch Granit au Cafe

For ten persons put one quart of vanilla ice cream into a freezer and mix in with it three Italian meringue egg-whites (made with three beaten egg-whites and two gills of forty-degree syrup properly liquefied with coffee made with water). To make this coffee requires one quart of water to six ounces of coffee; add it to the cream when nearly firm so that it does not grain the punch, then put in a little brandy or kirsch.

Another way to make granite punch with coffee is to have four quarts of black coffee, one quart of cream, ten ounces of sugar, four gills of brandy and one quart of whipped cream or Italian meringue. Freeze as the above.

← No. 3504 Champagne Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3506 Dolgorouski Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two versions of a frozen punch: the first enriches vanilla ice cream with coffee-flavored Italian meringue, the second freezes sweetened black coffee and cream into a coarse granité. Both depend on adding the liquid late and keeping the alcohol modest enough that the mixture will actually freeze.

Gills and "forty-degree syrup"A gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup and four gills is two cups. Forty degrees is a Baumé hydrometer reading — a heavy sugar syrup, considerably denser than an equal-parts sugar-and-water syrup.
The freezerRanhofer means a pail-and-dasher freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which churns a soft, loose ice. A modern machine works, but expect the finished punch to stay slushy rather than scoopable; that is the intended texture.
"So that it does not grain"This is the hinge, and it is the recipe's own rationale: the coffee goes in only when the mixture is nearly firm, then is worked in quickly and evenly.
Coffee strengthSix ounces of ground coffee to a quart of water is about three times normal brewing strength — a concentrate, not a cup of coffee. Brew it that strong and cool it completely; weak coffee will thin the punch and dilute the flavor to nothing.
Italian meringue in practiceThree whites beaten, with the syrup worked in and whipping continued. Note that here the syrup is a forty-degree syrup thinned with coffee rather than a syrup boiled to soft ball, so the whites are not reliably pasteurized in a dessert that is never heated — use pasteurized whites if that matters for who is eating.
Alcohol and freezing pointBrandy or kirsch is what makes this a punch rather than an ice, but it depresses the freezing point sharply. The second formula's four gills (two cups) in about six quarts is manageable; increasing it will leave you with cold soup.
YieldThe first version serves the stated ten as a palate course; a quart of ice cream plus the meringue and coffee gives well over a quarter cup a head. The second makes roughly six quarts and belongs to a banquet — scale it down if you are cooking for a table.

A Little History

In the service Ranhofer knew at Delmonico's, a frozen punch was not dessert but an interval: a small, spirit-laced ice set down partway through a long menu, before the roast or game course, to reset the palate. Granité names the texture rather than the flavor — deliberately grainy, stirred rather than smoothed. The many punch numbers running through this section of The Epicurean (1894) show how routine the course was in American grand-restaurant cooking of the 1880s and 1890s; each was distinguished by its flavoring and its liquor, and coffee sat alongside champagne, kirsch and rum as one of the options. The Italian meringue folded into the first version appears in period practice as a way of giving a frozen mixture body and a lighter mouthfeel.