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Bcilk Punch to Keep

A citrus punch made with oranges, lemons, sugar, water, milk, and soaked rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Bcilk Punch to Keep

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peel

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible and grate them to extract the flavor.

  2. Soak the peel in a bottle of rum or brandy for 24 hours, tightly sealed.

Mix and strain

  1. Squeeze the juice from the fruit into a large bowl with the sugar.

  2. Add 4 quarts of boiling water and 1 quart of fresh milk to the mixture and stir well.

  3. Incorporate the soaked rum or brandy, then strain the mixture through a jelly bag until clear.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and cork the punch immediately.

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

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

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

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

  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

Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Lemons
Provide sourness and acidity, with fragrant oils in the peel adding aroma.
Oranges
Add juice, mild sweetness and aromatic oils from the peel.
Fresh milk
Curdles as it mixes with the acidic juice, carrying suspended solids that clarify the punch when strained.
Rum or brandy
Extracts and carries flavour from the peel and adds alcoholic warmth to the punch.

The step that matters

Paring the peel as thin as possible. The white pith under the zest is bitter. Paring thinly takes only the oily, aromatic outer layer, so the soaked spirit tastes of citrus rather than bitterness.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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