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Punch, Cardinal
Place in a bowl half pound granulated sugar, grate in the rind of half a very sound lemon and squeeze in the juice of three medium-sized, sound lemons, the juice of half an orange, adding one gill raspberry syrup and one and a half pints lukewarm water, two teaspoons Swiss kirsch and one teaspoon maraschino. Thoroughly mix with a wooden spoon for three minutes, then add four drops vegetable carmine, if handy; mix a little. Strain and place it in a small freezer and freeze same as vanilla ice cream. Fill up six punch glasses and serve.
This is a frozen punch — closer to a sorbet than a drink — meant to be spooned from a glass. The alcohol keeps it soft, so it will never set hard.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 4 fluid ounces. One and a half pints of water is three cups.
- Rub the rind into the sugarGrating the zest directly onto the sugar and letting it sit a few minutes draws out the oils, the same principle as an oleo-saccharum in a punch bowl. Do this before adding any liquid or you lose most of the aroma.
- Raspberry syrupA sweetened fruit syrup, not a cordial or a liqueur. Bar-grade raspberry syrup or a homemade one (equal weights berry juice and sugar, briefly heated) both work; skip anything labelled "raspberry flavored" for pancakes.
- Kirsch and maraschinoKirsch is a dry cherry brandy with no sugar; maraschino here is the Dalmatian liqueur of the Luxardo type. The red cocktail cherries took their name from having originally been preserved in that liqueur, though the modern product has little to do with it. Two teaspoons and one teaspoon respectively are small amounts and are there for scent; the sugar, rather than three teaspoons of spirits, does most of the work of keeping the ice soft.
- Vegetable carminePeriod red colouring, sold as a liquid. Carmine proper is cochineal-derived, while products labelled "vegetable" suggest a plant-based red; what was in the bottle is not certain. The recipe treats it as optional, and a few drops of any red food colouring does the same job. Without it the punch is a pale rose.
- "A small freezer"A hand-crank ice cream freezer with an ice-and-salt bath. In a modern machine, churn until it holds a soft, slushy consistency. Without a machine, freeze in a shallow pan and rake with a fork every 20 to 30 minutes for a granita texture — the sugar and spirit load makes still-freezing forgiving.
- Do not overfreezeSugar plus spirits gives a low freezing point; pushed too far in a deep-freeze the mixture goes to hard slush and loses its edge. Serve straight from the churn, or hold no more than an hour in the freezer and stir before glassing.
- YieldSix punch glasses. The mixed liquid comes to rather more than a quart before freezing, so the servings are small, as intended. Chill the glasses first.
Cardinal punch is often said to take its name from its color, the deep red of a cardinal's robes, and the name attaches to a whole family of punches in nineteenth-century German and Austrian drink books. Filippini's version belongs to a different tradition: the frozen punch served as a mid-meal course in the long Delmonico-style dinners he cooked for, a course meant to reset the palate. Punch Cardinal is one of these. The Swiss kirsch and the Dalmatian maraschino, and the instruction to add carmine "if handy," are a reminder that bottled coloring was a normal item on a professional shelf in 1906.