No. 3511

Milk Punch—Iced

Punch Glace au Lait

This punch is not to be served the same as a liqueur punch, for it must be thoroughly frozen. Make a preparation with two quarts of milk and four ounces of sugar, strain and freeze. When three-quarters frozen mix in as much whipped cream, then add slowly one gill of rum and one gill of brandy. Use this preparation to fill some glasses, smooth the tops neatly and grate a little nutmeg over; lay them in a lightly imbedded freezing box. This milk punch can be transported quite a distance, for the ice will keep a length of time by putting the glasses in covered cardboard boxes that close hermetically.

← No. 3510 Cordial Punch—Iced Ices & Ice Creams No. 3512 Montmorency Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's frozen punch is closer to a boozy soft-serve than to ice cream, and the alcohol is what makes it behave the way it does. Read the freezing notes before you start.

Add the spirits last, and slowlyAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so rum and brandy stirred in early make the base slower to freeze and softer when it does. That is consistent with the instruction to wait until the mixture is three-quarters frozen and pour them in gradually.
A gillHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. Two gills of spirits go into the whole batch.
"As much whipped cream"This means an equal volume of cream, whipped, folded into the partly frozen milk base — so roughly two quarts of whipped cream, which is about one quart of heavy cream before whipping. The reading is not absolutely certain, but the resulting light, mousse-like texture is what a punch glacé was meant to have.
The sugar is low by modern tasteFour ounces of sugar to two quarts of milk is well under half a cup per quart, far less than any modern ice cream. Sugar also controls iciness, so with this little of it the base will freeze hard and grainy; the whipped cream and the spirits are doing the softening work here.
The freezing boxRanhofer's kitchen packed moulds in a wooden tub of crushed ice and coarse salt. A domestic ice cream machine churns the base, and a home freezer at 0F holds the filled glasses — but expect them to stay scoopably soft rather than set firm, because of the alcohol.
Ignore the transport adviceServe it where you froze it rather than trusting a closed cardboard box to hold the freeze over a journey.
NutmegGrate it over the tops just before serving; freshly grated nutmeg is far more aromatic than pre-grated, and the garnish is the only spice in the dish.
YieldRoughly four quarts of finished punch on the equal-volume reading of the cream, enough to fill twenty or more small glasses.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working compendium of that restaurant's repertoire; the long run of iced punches in the ices section reflects a nineteenth-century service convention in which a frozen, lightly alcoholic punch was sent out partway through a long dinner, usually before the roast, as a palate-clearing interval rather than as a dessert. His opening warning that this one "is not to be served the same as a liqueur punch" marks a distinction from the other punches in the section, though he does not spell out what it consists of; this one is meant to be genuinely frozen and eaten from the glass. Milk punch itself is much older than Delmonico's and is generally traced to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain, where spirits, sugar, spice and citrus were combined with milk he version version now called clarified milk punch. Ranhofer keeps the milk, rum, brandy and nutmeg of that ancestry and drops the clarifying, sending the whole thing to the ice tub instead.