No. 3510

Cordial Punch—Iced

Punch Glace aux Liqueurs

Pour eight gills of cold twenty-eight degree syrup into a glazed vessel; mix with it a quarter of a vanilla bean, a few bits of lemon peel, a gill of lemon juice, the peel of half an orange and the juice of four oranges; let infuse for half an hour then strain; boil till it attains twenty degrees; rectify if necessary. Freeze the preparation in a freezer packed in salted ice after the usual manner, and when smooth and consistent incorporate four Italian meringue egg-whites (No. 140); beat again slowly and add two gills of liqueur or cordial, such as rum, kirsch, prunelle, maraschino, kimmel, etc. Let become consistent once more and serve.

← No. 3509 Imperial Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3511 Milk Punch—Iced →

For the Modern Kitchen

A liqueur-spiked punch ice from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, written for cooks who owned a saccharometer and a hand-crank freezer. The measurements are all in gills and degrees Baum hththat really needs decoding.

GillsA gill is half a cup. Eight gills of syrup is one quart; a gill of lemon juice is half a cup; two gills of liqueur is one cup.
Degrees mean Baum tthe, not temperatureDegrees mean Baume, not temperature -- Nineteenth-century confectioners measured syrup density with a Baume saccharometer floated in the cold liquid. Twenty-eight degrees is a heavy stock syrup (about 51 percent sugar by weight, near 1.24 specific gravity -- roughly equal weights of sugar and water); twenty degrees is a lighter one, around 36 percent sugar, near 1.16 specific gravity. A hydrometer or a refractometer does the same job today.
"Boil till it attains twenty degrees"The citrus juice thins the 28-degree syrup below the working strength, so the mixture is reduced until it reads 20. "Rectify if necessary" means correct in the other direction with water or more syrup if it overshoots. Test cold, not hot, or the reading is meaningless.
Why the density mattersSugar concentration sets the freezing point. Too heavy and the punch never sets; too light and it freezes into a solid block instead of the slushy, spoonable texture wanted here.
A glazed vesselGlazed earthenware or stoneware; the acid of the lemon and orange juice would have been kept away from bare metal pans. Glass or stainless steel serves the same purpose.
Italian meringue No. 140Whites beaten with sugar syrup cooked to the ball stage and poured in hot. It is folded in for body and lightness, not sweetness, and it helps hold the alcohol-loaded mixture together.
Add the spirit last, and coldA cup of rum or kirsch in this volume will not freeze on its own. Adding it before the base has set makes it much harder for the mixture to take. Hold the finished punch in the coldest part of the freezer; it is meant to stay soft, closer to a slush than a scoop.
Freezing without a freezer full of iceThe original is churned in a pail packed with ice and rock salt. A domestic ice cream machine works, but pre-chill the base thoroughly and expect the churn to struggle once the liqueur goes in; finish by hand with a spatula if the dasher stalls.
YieldAbout 1 1/2 quarts, which is eight to twelve servings at the small glass this was served in.

A Little History

Punch glac tthe belongs to the mid-meal pause of the formal Gilded Age dinner, where a small iced, spirit-laced sorbet was conventionally served before the roast or game course to refresh the palate before eating resumed. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, printed a whole run of them in The Epicurean (1894) \Roman punch, imperial punch, milk punch, and this one, built on whatever cordial the house happened to favour. The list of liqueurs he offers ", rum, kirsch, prunelle, maraschino, kimmel (k tthemmel, the caraway spirit) ", reads as a snapshot of what a well-stocked American restaurant cellar carried in the 1890s. The technique is confectioner's work rather than cook's work: syrup measured by saccharometer, an Italian meringue folded in for volume, and the alcohol withheld to the last moment because it fights the freeze.