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Drink

Milk Punch for Invalids

A chilled drink made from sweetened milk, rum, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Milk Punch for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Sweeten the milk to taste.

  2. Mix the sweetened milk and rum together.

Serve

  1. Grate a little nutmeg over the top of each glass.

  2. Serve with straws in each glass.

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. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the creamy body of the punch and softens the rum's harshness.
Rum
Provides the alcoholic base and warming flavour of the punch.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic finish on the surface of each glass.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Mintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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