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Drink

Milk Punch

A rum or brandy infused drink with orange and lemon rinds, sugar, fruit juice, boiling water, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 the spirit

  1. Place the thinly pared rinds of the oranges and lemons into a bottle of rum or brandy.

  2. Cork tightly and let sit for 2 days.

Make the punch

  1. Combine the rinds of 6 lemons with 2 pounds of lump sugar in a bowl.

  2. Squeeze the juice from all the fruit over the sugar and mix well.

  3. Add 3 quarts of boiling water and 1 quart of boiling milk to the mixture, along with ½ teaspoon of grated nutmeg.

  4. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  5. Pour in the rum or brandy and stir again.

Clarify and bottle

  1. Strain until clear.

  2. Bottle closely.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid and fine solids settle out, clarifying the punch as it is strained.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and helps curdle the milk.
Lemon and orange rinds
Infuse the spirit with aromatic oils that carry the citrus flavour.
Rum or brandy
Provides the alcohol base that extracts and preserves the citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Pouring the milk in while the mixture is hot and acidic makes its proteins curdle, which carries cloudiness and debris down so the punch can be strained clear. Stirring it gently keeps the curds large enough to filter out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, 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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