No. 3520

Tremiere Punch

Punch a la Tremiere

Mix in a freezer one quart of pineapple water ice (No. 3606), one pint of orange ice (No. 3605) and one pint of strawberry ice (No. 3607). When thoroughly mixed incorporate a third of its volume of Italian meringue (No. 140), three gills of kirsch and a quarter of a bottle of champagne; with this preparation fill some Tremiere roses (Fig. 652) made of gum paste (no. 3624), or else they can be made of pulled sugar, and served at once.

← No. 3519 Tosca Punch Ices & Ice Creams No. 3521 American Sherbet →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional pastry department, so this entry is really an assembly instruction: three finished water ices, a cooked meringue and a great deal of liquor, spooned into sugar-paste flowers. Everything hinges on the alcohol, which will keep the mixture soft no matter how long you churn it.

Gills and bottlesThree gills of kirsch is about 1 1/2 cups (12 fl oz); a quarter of a bottle of champagne is roughly 6 fl oz. Together that is about 18 fl oz of alcohol in two quarts of ice (one quart pineapple, one pint orange, one pint strawberry).
It will not freeze hardAlcohol depresses the freezing point sharply, and this proportion puts the mixture permanently at a slush. That is the intent \slsipping frozen punch, not a scoopable ice \s but it means the whole thing must be made and served immediately, as the original says. It cannot be held in a freezer overnight.
Italian meringueRanhofer's No. 140 is egg whites whipped with boiled sugar syrup. It is folded in to lighten the ice and give it body; a third of the volume of two quarts of ice is roughly 21 fl oz of finished meringue.
The three icesPineapple, orange and strawberry water ices are simply fruit juice or puree, sugar syrup, no dairy. Any well-made modern sorbet of those three flavors stands in. Keep them on the tart side, since the sugar in the meringue and the fruit sweetness compound quickly.
Freezer means the machine “Mix in a freezer” refers to the ice-cream freezer, the churn itself, not the appliance. In practice you are folding the softened ices together in the chilled canister.
The rosesGum paste (No. 3624) is sugar, gum tragacanth and water, rolled thin and shaped; pulled sugar is the alternative given. Both are edible but essentially structural. Modern equivalents are gum-paste or isomalt work, and any small stemmed glass or coupe serves the same purpose if you skip the sugar flowers.
YieldAbout two quarts of ice plus roughly 21 fl oz of meringue and 18 fl oz of liquor, call it three quarts finished -- enough for 12 to 16 small servings of the size a frozen punch course calls for.

A Little History

Rose trémière is the French name for the hollyhock, and the recipe directs the mixture into 'Tremiere roses' of gum paste or pulled sugar (Fig. 652). Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of the 1894 volume this comes from, gives a long run of numbered punches of this kind, because the frozen punch was a fixed station in a long nineteenth-century service, spiked with spirits and served in the middle of the meal to reset the palate rather than to finish it. The pattern is consistent across his punch recipes: a base of water ices, a cooked meringue for lightness, then kirsch, rum or brandy and champagne stirred in at the last moment. The sugar-paste vessel belongs to the same period's taste for the pièce montée, where the container was as much of the dish as its contents, and it tells you this was written for a kitchen with a confectioner on staff.