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Punch, Andalouse
Cut three good-sized oranges into equal halves, and with a spoon remove all the pulp and place in a bowl. Cut off a piece of the skin at the bottom of each half orange so they will stand on a dish without rolling. Squeeze the pulp of the oranges into a bowl, as well as the juice of three lemons; add half pound granulated sugar and one quart lukewarm water. Sharply mix with the spatula for five minutes. Strain through a cheesecloth into an ice-cream freezer. Set the freezer in a tub with broken ice and rock salt all around. Cover the freezer and proceed to freeze for thirty minutes. When ready pour in two tablespoons of curacao and lightly mix. With a small knife make dentilated incisions all around the brim of each half orange shell. Divide the punch equally into the six shells. Dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A frozen citrus punch of the sort served midway through a long dinner, churned soft rather than firm and packed back into the orange shells. Nothing here has changed chemically; only the equipment has.
- Texture is the whole pointThis should come out of the freezer as a loose, spoonable slush rather than a firm sorbet. Thirty minutes in a hand-crank churn will not set the mixture solid, and a dinner-table punch was meant to be soft enough to eat with a spoon.
- The freezer and the saltAn "ice-cream freezer" here is the hand-cranked bucket type: a metal canister set in a wooden tub, packed with broken ice and rock salt in roughly three parts ice to one part salt by volume. A modern churn works, or freeze the mixture in a shallow metal pan and rake it with a fork every twenty minutes for a granita-like result.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pound of granulated sugar is a generous cup (about 225 g). One quart is 4 cups. The mixture comes to roughly five cups before freezing, well more than six orange halves will hold, so expect a surplus to serve alongside.
- Why lukewarm waterThe sugar is dissolved cold in this recipe, so tepid water and five minutes of vigorous stirring are doing the work of a syrup. If any grit remains after straining, warm a cupful and dissolve the sugar in that before combining.
- Add the curaçao last, as writtenAlcohol depresses the freezing point, so stirring it in at the end keeps the punch from staying slack in the churn. Two tablespoons in a quart is a flavouring, not a spirit measure.
- "Dentilated incisions"Zigzag cuts around the rim of each shell, making a saw-tooth edge. Use a small paring knife on the emptied halves before filling, and take the thin slice off the base so they sit level.
- Working the shellsHalve the oranges across the equator, loosen the pulp with a grapefruit spoon, and scrape the membranes clean; any pith left inside will bleed bitterness into the ice. Chill or briefly freeze the shells before filling so the punch does not slump.
- Yield and serviceSix portions, one half-orange each. Fill at the last moment and serve on a folded napkin, which both steadies the shells and absorbs the melt.
A "punch" in a menu of this period was not a bowl of drink but a course: a small, barely frozen, spirit-laced ice served between the heavy roast and what followed, to reset the palate and stretch the meal. Punch à la romaine, made with rum and meringue, is the best-known survivor of the family; this one is its plain citrus cousin. The label andalouse, Andalusian, is often taken as a nod to Spanish oranges, though that reading is inference rather than established fact; what is certain is the curaçao, itself an orange-peel liqueur, that finishes the dish. Serving an ice in the hollowed skin of its own fruit was a standard restaurant flourish rather than a regional tradition, and the same trick appears in period books with lemons, tangerines and melons. That the recipe assumes a household can pack a churn with broken ice and rock salt at will is a reminder of how thoroughly the commercial ice trade had reached ambitious kitchens.