No. 3514

Pargny Punch

Punch Pargny

Soak two gelatine leaves in cold water for half an hour, drain and dissolve in a quart of hot milk, afterward adding one quart of cream, half a pound of sugar, half a pint of good sherry and two gills of rum. Whip the whole well together and strain through a sieve; put it into a freezer and freeze with half as much salt as is required for ordinary ices. Add some Italian meringue (No. 140). This punch should be mellow and not hard; dress in fancy glass cups.

← No. 3513 Nenuphar Punch—Lilies Ices & Ice Creams No. 3515 Roman Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

A soft, boozy frozen punch from Ranhofer's Delmonico's book, served as a mid-meal refresher rather than a dessert. The whole point is that it never freezes firm, and the recipe is built to guarantee that.

The hinge: a deliberately under-frozen mixThe instruction to use "half as much salt as is required for ordinary ices" is not thrift. Less salt in the ice bath means a warmer brine and a slushier set, which together with the sherry and rum keeps the punch at a spoonable, mellow consistency. In a modern machine, churn only until it reaches the texture of thick soft-serve and serve at once; a domestic freezer will not harden it much anyway.
Gills and quantitiesA gill is half a cup, so two gills of rum is one cup, and half a pint of sherry is one cup. The finished base is roughly two and a half quarts before the meringue goes in, enough for a dozen or more small glasses.
Gelatine leavesNineteenth-century leaf gelatine was weaker and far less standardised than today's sheets. Two modern platinum-grade leaves (about 3.5 g) in a base of some two and a half quarts is a very light set, which is what you want here; the gelatine appears to be there to keep the alcohol-laden mixture from separating rather than to make jelly. Soaked leaves dissolve readily in hot, not boiling, milk.
"Freezer"In 1894 this meant a pail-and-dasher machine packed with cracked ice and rock salt, cranked by hand. Any modern churn works; still-freezing in a shallow pan with vigorous whisking every twenty minutes also works but gives a coarser grain.
Italian meringueRanhofer's No. 140 is an Italian meringue: egg whites whipped and set with boiling sugar syrup, the hot syrup partly cooking the whites as it is beaten in. Fold it in at the very end, once the base is frozen, and expect the volume to increase noticeably. The amount is left to the cook.
Alcohol and setA cup each of sherry and rum in this volume lowers the freezing point enough that the mixture will stay slushy. If you reduce the spirits, reduce the churning time as well or you will end up with a firm ice cream, which is not what this course is for.
Serving"Fancy glass cups" means small chilled glasses. Serve immediately and eat with a spoon; the punch slumps within minutes at room temperature.

A Little History

Iced punches like this one occupied a fixed slot in the long formal dinners of the late nineteenth century, served after the entrees and before the roast and game to reset the palate; the best known survivor is Punch Romaine, which appears as the next entry in Ranhofer's own list. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, printed many variations in The Epicurean (1894), each distinguished mainly by its liquor and its garnish, and named after places, flowers, and patrons in the manner of the period; the book gives no clue as to which of the several Pargnys, or whether a diner was being honoured instead. What is unusual here is the milk-and-cream base: table punches of the era were generally said to be water ices, and this richer version sits closer to what would later be called a frozen eggnog or a milk sherbet.