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American Punch
Prepare an orange-water ice, adding while in the freezer a half gill each claret and champagne cider and one tablespoon each kirsch and maraschino. Mix well with the spatula and let freeze for fifteen minutes more, fill up six sherbet glasses and serve.
A frozen punch, not a drink in a bowl: an orange water ice spiked at the end of churning and served in stemmed glasses. The whole thing hinges on how much alcohol goes in.
- Gills and half gillsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill is 4 tablespoons — 1/4 cup each of claret and champagne cider. The kirsch and maraschino are a tablespoon each, and those proportions matter more than they look.
- Don't increase the liquorAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so added spirits make the mixture harder to freeze firm. Since the recipe doesn't say how much orange water ice you start with, treat the stated quantities as the ceiling rather than a guideline; more liquor risks a mixture that never sets to a spoonable texture.
- "The freezer"In a recipe of this period this means a hand-cranked ice-cream churn packed with ice and rock salt, not a cabinet freezer. A modern ice cream maker does the same job; the spirits go in near the end of churning, exactly as written.
- Champagne ciderA sparkling apple cider, bottled and corked like wine. Any dry sparkling cider works; hard cider is closer to the period product than sweet supermarket cider.
- ClaretPeriod shorthand for red Bordeaux, and by extension any dry red. Use something light and acidic rather than a heavy, oaky wine, which will muddy the orange.
- MaraschinoA clear cherry liqueur (Luxardo and similar), sweet but not syrupy, and not the syrup from a jar of cocktail cherries. The syrup will make the punch cloying and pink.
- The last fifteen minutesAfter the spatula work, the mixture needs to firm up again. Fifteen minutes in the churn is about right; if you transfer it to the freezer instead, allow longer and stir once so it doesn't set into a solid block.
- YieldSix sherbet glasses, which in period means small stemmed glasses of 3 to 4 ounces — a course, not a dessert portion.
Frozen punches like this belonged to the middle of a long formal dinner rather than the end of it. The best-known version is Roman punch, a spirit-laced water ice served between the roast and the game to reset the palate, and by the late nineteenth century American hotel and household cookbooks appear to have been printing variations on it — the name "American Punch" is often taken to reflect the use of champagne cider, a domestic sparkling apple drink, though the reasoning is a matter of inference rather than record. The dish also shows how a hand-cranked freezer was expected equipment in a well-run kitchen: an orange water ice was assumed knowledge, and the recipe spends its words only on what gets stirred in at the end.