No. 3512
Montmorency Punch
Punch a la Montmorency
This is a frozen punch, not a dessert ice: it belongs to the mid-meal course that once separated roast from game, and it is meant to be soft and drinkable rather than scoopable. The alcohol guarantees that.
- The measurementsA gill is half a cup, so the kirsch is 1/2 cup and the noyau 1/4 cup; half a pint of Sauterne is 1 cup. "A quarter as much Italian meringue" is ambiguous: read against the wine it means about 1/4 cup, though it could be taken against the whole mixture.
- It will not freeze hardRoughly 1 3/4 cups of spirits and wine in two quarts of ice cream lowers the freezing point enough to keep the punch soft and slushy rather than scoopable, which is correct here; do not try to firm it up by freezing longer.
- Work cold and fastHave the cherry ice cream already frozen and very cold, chill the liqueurs and wine, and stir them in quickly in the machine or by hand in a metal bowl set over ice. Adding room-temperature liquid to soft ice cream will melt it past recovery.
- NoyauCrème de noyaux, a pale liqueur flavored with stone-fruit kernels, sold now mostly as an almond-scented pink or clear cordial. Modern bottlings are made without the bitter-almond hazard of nineteenth-century homemade versions; amaretto or a second measure of kirsch will stand in if you cannot find it.
- SauterneRanhofer means sweet Bordeaux Sauternes, not the American wine later sold generically as "sauterne". A sweet Sauternes, Barsac or late-harvest Semillon keeps the balance; a dry white will read thin and sour against the cherry.
- Italian meringueWhites beaten with hot sugar syrup, which partly cooks them as it is poured in; the book gives its own method at No. 140, and modern practice takes the syrup to around the firm-ball stage. It is added for smoothness and lightness, so fold it in last and lightly.
- The ice cupsThe recipe asks only for cups of natural ice "slightly reddened"; it does not say how they were formed or what tinted them. Small chilled glasses, or hollowed ice molds made in a domestic ice tray, do the same job; serve immediately, since the punch slumps within minutes.
- YieldAbout two and a half quarts once the additions are in. It is served in small cups of a few spoonfuls each, not as a bowl of ice cream, so it will stretch a long way.
Montmorency is a sour cherry named for the valley north of Paris where it was long grown, and by the nineteenth century the name on a French menu was shorthand for cherry. The dish comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, where a frozen punch was a standard interval in a long formal dinner: a spirituous half-frozen ice, cousin to punch a la romaine, offered between the heavy central courses to reset the palate. The elaborate service in reddened ice cups is typical of the book's ambitions.