No. 3519

Tosca Punch

Punch a la Tosca

Put in a freezer packed in ice one pint of Andalusian ice cream (No. 3446) and as much almond ice cream (No. 3461); work well, adding two gills of noyau and an eighth of a bottle of champagne, also a third as much Italian meringue (No. 140). Color a delicate pink and with the preparation fill some goblets made of colorless natural water frozen to a sufficient thickness, then unmold and set in thick blue cardboard boxes the same shape as the glasses. The quantity here given is sufficient to serve twelve persons.

← No. 3518 Stanley Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3520 Tremiere Punch →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's punch ices are alcoholic semi-frozen preparations meant to be served mid-meal, not scooped like dessert ice cream. Nearly everything about this one depends on cross-references and on keeping the whole works brutally cold.

The hinge: alcohol and freezingA cup of noyau plus champagne in roughly a quart of base will not set hard: that is the point, but it means the mixture must be assembled in a container already at freezer temperature and returned to the coldest part of your freezer at once. Work in a chilled metal bowl and keep everything as cold as possible, or it will slump into a drink.
Gills and bottle fractionsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of noyau is one cup. An eighth of a standard bottle of champagne is about 3 fl oz. "A third as much Italian meringue" does not say a third of what; if it means a third of the volume of the combined ice creams, that is roughly a cup and a third of meringue for two pints of base.
NoyauCrème de noyau (or noyaux) is a stone-fruit-kernel liqueur, almond-scented and usually tinted pink or clear. If you cannot find one, an almond liqueur such as amaretto is the nearest commercial stand-in, though it is sweeter.
The cross-referenced basesNos. 3446 and 3461 are Ranhofer's own ice creams, cited here but not reproduced. Failing those, a good ice cream base and a proper almond ice cream will carry the recipe; the almond one should be assertive, since the noyau reinforces it rather than supplying it.
Italian meringueWhites beaten with hot sugar syrup at about 240°F. The syrup partly cooks them but does not pasteurise them reliably, and nothing here is heated afterwards. Use pasteurised whites if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
The pinkIn 1894 this would most likely have been cochineal or carmine. A few drops of liquid colour, or a spoonful of raspberry or beet reduction, gives the same "delicate" tint without shifting the flavour.
Ice gobletsFreeze filtered water in a goblet-shaped mould with a smaller mould suspended inside it, or use a silicone dome-and-stem form; unmould by a two-second dip in cool water. The blue cardboard boxes are insulation and stage dressing at once — chilled coupe glasses set on crushed ice do the same job with less drama.
Yield and serviceTwelve, as stated, and the portions are small by design. Serve as a between-courses punch or after a rich roast, not as a finishing dessert.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years in the kitchens of Delmonico's, and its long run of "punches" belongs to a vanished course: a spirituous half-frozen ice served in the middle of a formal dinner to reset the palate before the roast. Restaurant kitchens of the period named such trifles after whatever was filling the theatres, and this one is generally traced to Sardou's La Tosca, the 1887 melodrama written for Sarah Bernhardt, which was touring to great success well before Puccini's opera of 1900. The staging — a pink ice inside a goblet moulded by freezing water to thickness, nested in a blue box — is characteristic of Ranhofer at his most theatrical, and a reminder that a Delmonico's dinner was judged as much by what came to the table as by what was in it.