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Claret Punch (Prepare a lemon-water ice)
Prepare a lemon-water ice preparation. Pour in one gill claret, a saltspoon cinnamon, one gill raspberry syrup and two tablespoons kirsch. Strain the preparation into the ice-cream freezer and proceed to freeze and serve in same way.
This is a frozen punch rather than a drink: a lemon water ice built up with red wine, raspberry syrup and cherry brandy, then churned. The whole thing hinges on how much alcohol goes into the base, since spirit is what keeps ice from setting.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon, so the cinnamon is a background note rather than a flavour of its own.
- The lemon-water ice baseThe recipe assumes you have already made one from the book's own formula: essentially a sugar syrup, lemon juice and water, chilled. Any standard lemon sorbet base works, but keep it on the tart, fairly sweet side, since the raspberry syrup and wine will dilute the acidity.
- ClaretNineteenth- and early twentieth-century English usage for red Bordeaux. A dry, medium-bodied red with decent acidity is the intent; anything jammy or heavily oaked will fight the lemon.
- Raspberry syrupNot the modern coffee-bar flavouring syrup, which is thin and sweetly artificial. The period product was a thick fruit syrup close to a French sirop de framboise; a good-quality raspberry syrup or a reduced fresh-raspberry syrup, strained, is the right substitute.
- KirschClear, unsweetened cherry brandy at around 40 percent alcohol. Do not swap in a sweet cherry liqueur such as maraschino or cherry brandy proper unless you cut back on the raspberry syrup, or the punch will be cloying.
- Alcohol and freezingThe recipe does not say how much lemon-water ice base to start from, but a gill of wine plus two tablespoons of kirsch is a substantial dose of alcohol for a small quantity of base. Expect a soft, slushy, spoonable ice rather than a firm one. If it refuses to set at all in a modern machine, the base was probably too small in proportion to the alcohol.
- The freezerAn ice-cream freezer here means a hand-cranked bucket packed with ice and rock salt, a brine that chills well below the freezing point of water and into the range of a modern freezer. A modern churn with a pre-frozen bowl works, but pre-chill the mixture thoroughly first, and give the bowl a full 24 hours in the freezer.
- Straining and servingStraining catches the cinnamon and any raspberry seeds, and matters for texture. Serve immediately in small chilled glasses, three or four ounces each; this is an intermediate or dessert course, not a tall drink, and it slumps quickly once out of the churn.
Frozen punches occupy a distinct place in the long formal dinner of the late nineteenth century, where a small, sharp, half-frozen glass of iced wine and spirit was served between the heavy courses to reset the palate before the roast. The best-known of the type is punch a la romaine, and the pattern is always the same: a lemon water ice used as the carrier for wine or spirits, sometimes lightened with meringue. Claret, the English name for red Bordeaux, gave its name to a whole family of these preparations on both sides of the Atlantic, from the cold claret cup to the iced version here. That the instructions assume you already know the lemon-water-ice formula, and simply say to proceed and serve in the same way, tells you the book expected a cook working through a chapter rather than a reader opening to a single page.