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Drink

Milk Punch

A chilled drink made with milk, water, sugar, lemon zest, nutmeg, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the yellow skin off the lemons and mix it with the sugar.

Make the punch

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, water, grated lemon skin, and sugar. Bring to a boil.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the nutmeg, rum, and lemon juice.

Strain and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through a jelly cloth and serve when cold.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and the oils in the zest.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw the fragrant oils out of the lemon zest.
Rich sweet milk
Adds richness and body and softens the sharpness of the citrus and spirit.
Rum or brandy
Adds its own flavor and warming aroma to the punch.
Grated nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice off the heat. Lemon juice is acidic, and acid can curdle hot milk. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring in the juice and spirit lowers the chance of curdling, and straining through a jelly cloth clears any fine curds that do form.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, nutmeg, 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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