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Milk Punch

A chilled alcoholic beverage made with brandy, rum, citrus rinds, juice, water, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and mix

  1. Infuse the brandy with the lemon and orange rinds overnight.

  2. Remove the lemon and orange peels before adding the juice and water.

  3. Add the juices of the lemons and oranges, cold boiled water, sugar, and milk to the brandy mixture.

  4. Mix well and let it cool.

Age

  1. Transfer the mixture to a cask and seal it tightly.

  2. Let it sit for 1 month to 6 weeks.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French brandy
Provides the alcoholic base and carries the flavour of the citrus rinds.
Lemon and orange rind
Supplies aromatic citrus oils that scent the spirit during infusion.
Lemon and orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour to balance the sugar and spirit.
Fine loaf sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the citrus and the alcohol.
Milk
Softens the punch and helps clarify it as the milk proteins settle.

The step that matters

Remove the peels before adding the juice and water. Leaving the rinds in after the juice is added lets the bitter pith and oils keep extracting, making the punch harsher and more bitter than intended.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, orange, sugar, milk, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, orange, sugar, milk, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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