Home › The World's Kitchen › Punch Aux Roses
Punch Aux Roses
Pour a tablespoon rose flavouring into the freezer of the above lemon water ice when ready; mix well with the wooden spoon, then fill up six sherbet glasses and serve.
A one-line finishing instruction rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the lemon water ice from the preceding entry churning in front of you. Two things need translating before it works in a modern kitchen.
- "The freezer" is the canisterIn this period the freezer is the metal can of a hand-cranked ice-cream maker packed in salt and ice, not a compartment of an appliance. Add the flavouring to the churned ice in the machine's bowl at the end of churning, while it is still soft enough to stir.
- Rose flavouring is not one productA tablespoon is the right order of magnitude for rosewater, which is dilute. Rose extract or rose essence sold today is many times stronger, and a tablespoon would make the ice taste of soap; with those, start with a scant quarter teaspoon and taste.
- Add it cold, at the endRose aroma is volatile and fades with heat or long standing, so it is best stirred in after freezing rather than cooked into the syrup. The direction to add it 'when ready' points to the moment the water ice has finished freezing.
- Stir, do not churn onA wooden spoon was the standard tool for working ices. The instruction is to mix the flavouring well through the frozen ice by hand rather than to keep churning it.
- Yield and serviceSix sherbet glasses; small stemmed glasses, though the recipe gives no capacity. Serve at once, or return to the freezer only briefly, since water ices set hard and grainy.
- Why it is called punchNo spirits are specified here. If you want the frozen punch of the period, a tablespoon or two of kirsch or light rum stirred in with the rose will loosen the texture noticeably, so add it sparingly.
Frozen punches of this kind belonged to the formal multi-course dinner, where a small glass of iced, lightly alcoholic sherbet was served part-way through the meal as a pause before the roast — the best-known survivor being punch à la romaine. Building them on a plain lemon water ice and then perfuming the base with a single flavouring is the sort of economy often attributed to professional kitchens of the era: one syrup, many named desserts. Rose is generally said to be the older of the two great confectioner's perfumes, having reached European kitchens from Persian and Arab cooking by way of medieval sweets, and it is traditionally held to have given way to vanilla and citrus in Western pastry over time. Its appearance in a book of this sort suggests it was already somewhat exotic to the intended reader rather than routine.