No. 3508

Favorite Punch

Punch a la Favorite

Arrange in a freezer one quart of strawberry water ice (No. 3607); work it well and mix in two gills of rum, one gill of brandy and a quarter as much Italian meringue (No. 140). Prepare and pack some goblet-shaped molds in salted ice, filling them three-quarters full of water slightly whitened with milk; when frozen to one-eighth of an inch in thickness empty out, then fill the mold entirely with water tinted red; when frozen to an eighth of an inch in thickness empty and range them in small fancy blue boxes; place in a freezing box and when ready to serve fill with the strawberry punch.

← No. 3507 Elizabeth Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3509 Imperial Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's punch ices are half drink, half dessert, and this one asks for two separate operations: a spiked strawberry ice, and hollow ice shells to serve it in. The shells are the fussy part and can be skipped without harming the punch.

GillsA gill is half a cup. Two gills of rum is 1 cup, one gill of brandy is 1/2 cup — roughly 1 1/2 cups of spirits to a quart of ice.
The meringue quantity is ambiguous"A quarter as much Italian meringue" gives no clear referent. It may mean a quarter of the volume of the liquor, i.e. roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup of meringue, but the original does not say so.
Italian meringueRanhofer's No. 140 is egg whites whipped with hot sugar syrup. In modern practice the syrup is taken to the firm-ball stage, around 240-245F, and poured onto the whites in a thin stream; the hot syrup stabilises and partly cooks them. It is not a raw-white foam, and it is what keeps the punch light rather than icy.
Why it will never freeze hardThat much alcohol depresses the freezing point badly. A punch ice is meant to stay at slush consistency, spoonable and slightly slack — do not keep churning in hope of a scoopable ice cream. Freeze the strawberry water ice firm first, then work the spirits and meringue in at the end.
"A freezer" and "salted ice"The original assumes a hand-cranked pail: a metal can turned inside a bucket packed with crushed ice and coarse salt, roughly three parts ice to one of salt. An electric machine handles the base ice; for the molds you still want the ice-and-salt bath, since a domestic freezer at 0F chills too slowly and evenly to build a clean shell.
Making the goblet shellsThe two-stage trick is the point. Fill the molds three-quarters with water barely tinted with milk, let an eighth of an inch freeze against the cold metal, pour off the still-liquid center, then fill the mold entirely with red-tinted water and freeze a second eighth-inch layer before emptying again. Work fast and keep everything in the ice; a shell that thin melts in the hand.
Yield and serviceAbout 1 1/2 quarts finished, serving eight to twelve in small glasses. This is a course to itself, served between heavy dishes or at the end of a long menu, not a bowl of dessert.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its punch section belongs to a specific piece of nineteenth-century menu architecture: the frozen punch served partway through a long formal dinner, generally traced to the Italian and French sorbetto/sorbet course and best known in English as punch romaine. It was there to interrupt, not to satisfy — a small glass of spirituous slush between the roast and the game, on the theory that it revived appetites dulled by several rich courses. The elaborate presentation here is equally of its period: kitchens with unlimited block ice and rock salt could afford to build disposable ice goblets, tint them in two colors, and set each one in a small blue box, and the resulting dish showed off exactly the kind of labor a restaurant like Delmonico's was selling.