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Punch, New Century
Prepare an orange punch, strain a half pint preserved strawberries through a sieve into freezer, pour in two tablespoons rum, thoroughly mix with spatula, divide punch into six sherbet glasses and serve.
This is a frozen punch — a semi-set slush served in glasses, not a poured drink — and it assumes you already have the book's orange punch made and chilled. The whole thing depends on the freezing, so read that point first.
- "Into freezer" means the ice-cream churnIn 1900 the freezer is the hand-cranked can packed in ice and rock salt. The recipe itself only says to mix with a spatula, but the vessel implies the mixture is chilled to a soft, granular slush. Without one, freeze the mixture in a shallow metal pan and rake it with a fork every 20-30 minutes until it is grainy but still spoonable.
- Never let it freeze hardKeep it stirred -- If left undisturbed the mixture forms coarse ice shards and separates. Frequent stirring or churning is what keeps the texture right.
- Half pintOne US cup of preserved strawberries — the sweet, syrupy kind put up in jars, not fresh berries. Modern strawberry preserves work directly; jam is thicker and may want thinning with a little of the punch.
- Why it is strainedPressing the preserves through a sieve removes seeds and skins and leaves a smooth purée. Push firmly with the back of a ladle and discard what stays behind.
- The rum is small on purposeTwo tablespoons for six glasses is flavouring, not strength. Adding a great deal more will make the mixture slower to set.
- SpatulaHere simply a broad wooden or metal blade for folding the purée through the punch; a rubber spatula does the same job.
- Yield and serviceSix small sherbet glasses. Chill the glasses first and serve immediately — a frozen punch begins to slump within a few minutes.
Frozen punches like this belong to a specific moment in formal dining: served between the roast and the game, or before the dessert, as a cold, faintly alcoholic pause in a long menu. The Roman punch of Victorian banquets is the best-known example. The word punch itself is generally traced to the Hindi panch, five, for the five components of the drink Englishmen encountered in India — spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice — though by the time it reached an ice-cream freezer the count had long since stopped mattering. That the recipe calls for preserved rather than fresh strawberries is a reminder of the season: this was a dish a household could put on the table in January.