No. 3517

Sunflower Punch

Punch Tournesol

Put two quarts of pineapple water ice (No. 3606) in a freezer; work it well, adding half as much Italian meringue (No. 140), two gills of kirsch and a quarter of a bottleful of champagne; fill some sunflowers (Fig. 649) made of gum paste (No. 3624) or pulled sugar (No. 3618) with the mixture and serve without delay.

← No. 3516 Siberian Punch—Lalla Rookh Ices & Ice Creams No. 3518 Stanley Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

A frozen punch from the Delmonico's kitchen: pineapple sorbet lightened with Italian meringue and spiked with kirsch and champagne, meant to be eaten with a spoon from a sugar-work flower. The alcohol is what makes or breaks it.

Alcohol and freezingTwo gills of kirsch (one cup) plus a quarter bottle of champagne (about 6 fl oz) in roughly three quarts of base will keep the mixture soft and slushy — that is the intended texture, not a fault. Add the spirits at the very end of churning, after the ice is already set, or the base will never firm up at all.
"Serve without delay"This is the hinge. A spirited punch of this kind holds its texture for minutes, not hours, and the sugar-work vessels weep as soon as they meet a wet, cold filling. Assemble at the last moment and send it straight out.
GillsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of kirsch is one cup. Use a real kirschwasser, not a sweetened cherry liqueur; the recipe is already carrying meringue and pineapple sugar.
The freezerRanhofer means a hand-cranked pail freezer packed with ice and rock salt, which is why he says to "work it well" — the churning is manual. A modern machine does the same job; churn the pineapple ice first, then fold in the meringue and liquor with a spatula.
Italian meringueEgg whites whipped while hot sugar syrup, boiled to about the soft-ball stage, is poured in. Half as much as the ice means roughly a quart of finished meringue by volume, which is a great deal of air — the punch should come out pale and foamy rather than dense.
The sunflowersNumbers 3618 and 3624 are pulled-sugar and gum-paste work, decorative shells built by a pastry chef with a sugar lamp. Chilled coupes, hollowed pineapple shells or small glass bowls carry the punch perfectly well; the flower is theatre, not flavour.
YieldAbout three and a half quarts once the meringue is folded in. As a between-course punch that is roughly twenty to twenty-five small servings.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the repertoire he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and its long run of "punches" belongs to a service convention of the period: a small, half-frozen, spirituous ice served in the middle of a long dinner to break the succession of rich courses and revive the appetite before the roast. Many of them are named for a person, a place or a conceit — Siberian, Lalla Rookh, Stanley — and tournesol, French for sunflower, names the vessel rather than any ingredient: a flower modelled in pulled sugar or gum paste, filled at the last second with pineapple ice. Kirsch and champagne recur in these frozen punches, and the Italian meringue is what distinguishes them texturally from a plain sorbet, giving the light, foaming body.