Skip to main content
Drink

Milk Punch

A fortified drink made with lemon rinds steeped in brandy, nutmeg, sugar, water, rum, lime juice, and boiled milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the flavouring

  1. Steep the lemon rinds in the brandy with the grated nutmeg for 3 days, shaking frequently.

Make the punch

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water, then add the rum and lime juice.

  2. Bring the fresh milk to a boil, then pour it into the mixture while stirring constantly.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours, then strain through double flannel and cork well.

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 + limetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon rinds
Release fragrant oils that flavour the brandy.
Brandy
Extracts lemon and nutmeg flavour and acts as the spirit base.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lime juice.
Lime juice
Adds acidity and brightness, and curdles the milk to clarify the punch.
Fresh milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid, which then clear as they settle and filter out.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk. Pour the milk in while stirring constantly so it curdles evenly into fine curds rather than large clumps. The curds carry cloudy solids out when the punch is strained, leaving it clear.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, brandy, nutmeg, sugar, rum, milk. 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.

More milk punch recipes

Rum 15Cambridge 9Hot 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes