No. 3513

Nenuphar Punch—Lilies

Punch Nenuphar

Place in a vessel the peel of one lemon, the peel of half an orange, half an ounce of coriander seeds and a small piece of Ceylon cinnamon, also four drops of extract of citron; set it in a heater or expose to the sun for four hours in a hermetically closed earthen vessel; afterward pass it through a filter and add a quart of syrup at thirty-two degrees. Mix the whole well and bring the composition to sixteen degrees, coloring to a light pink; strain through a very fine sieve and freeze. When the ice begins to congeal pour in three gills of kirsch and maraschino and half its volume of Italian meringue (No. 140). Use this ice for filling some gum paste Nenuphar lilies and serve at once.

← No. 3512 Montmorency Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3514 Pargny Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

A punch ice — a spirit-laced sorbet — from Ranhofer's frozen-dessert chapter, written for a kitchen with a sugar hydrometer and a pastry department. Two things need translating before it can be made: the degree scale, and the fact that the infusion liquid is never named.

The missing liquidThe peels, coriander, cinnamon and citron extract are set to infuse with nothing stated to infuse them in. Water is the likely intention, but the original names neither the liquid nor its quantity. Treat this as a genuine gap in the original rather than a fixed amount.
Degrees are Baume, not FahrenheitThirty-two degrees is a heavy syrup, on the order of sixty per cent sugar by weight. Bringing the mixture to sixteen degrees means diluting with water until the density is about half that — a light syrup a modern sorbet cook would recognize by taste and body.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so three gills is a cup and a half of kirsch and maraschino combined, split between the two as you like. That is a substantial dose of spirit for a quart-plus of base.
Why it will not freeze hardAlcohol depresses the freezing point sharply, which is the whole point of a punch ice: it stays slushy and spoonable. Add the spirits only after the base has begun to set, as directed, or the machine will never bring it past a liquid.
Extract of citronProbably an extract of citron (Citrus medica) rather than the candied citron of fruitcake, though "citron" is also French for lemon and the reading is not certain. Four drops is a flavoring accent; a good citrus extract stands in, used with the same restraint.
Italian meringueNo. 140 is whites whipped with hot sugar syrup poured in a thread. Folded in at half the volume of the ice, it is doing the work of an overrun agent — the result is closer to a spoom than a sorbet, light and foamy rather than dense.
"A heater or expose to the sun"The steam table or a sunny windowsill; the aim is a warm infusion held below a simmer for four hours, so the aromatics give up their oils without the citrus oils cooking off.
The gum paste liliesNenuphar lilies were modeled from pastillage, a sugar-and-gum paste that dries rock hard and is essentially inedible. They are a serving vessel. Without them the ice is simply served in glasses, and it must go out immediately — a soft alcoholic ice collapses within minutes.
YieldBetween the quart of syrup, the infusion, the spirits and the meringue you have upwards of two quarts of finished ice — the exact figure depends on the unstated infusion volume — enough for a dozen or so small servings. This is a between-courses ice, not a dessert portion.

A Little History

Punch ices occupied a specific slot in the long nineteenth-century dinner: a half-frozen, heavily spirited sorbet served partway through the meal, before or in place of the roast, to reset the palate. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, gives dozens of them in The Epicurean (1894), each named for a place, a fruit or — as here — a piece of decoration. Nenuphar is the French word for water lily, and the name belongs to the presentation rather than the flavor: the ice is a coriander-and-cinnamon spiced citrus punch, spooned into white sugar-paste lilies. Sculpted pastillage of this kind was a mark of a full pastry brigade, and dishes like this one were as much about what the kitchen could build as what it could cook. The Baume hydrometer readings throughout the chapter reflect the same professional world — sugar density measured by instrument, not guessed at by eye.