Name: Milk Punch
Ingredients: 1 tumbler of milk, well sweetened; 2 tablespoons of best brandy; 1 egg (optional)

Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

1 tumbler of milk, well sweetened
2 tablespoons of best brandy
1 egg (optional)

Directions

Sweeten the milk to taste and pour it into a glass.
Stir in the brandy until well combined.
Serve cold with ice.
For egg and milk punch, beat the egg very light with sugar and stir it in before adding the brandy.

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.

Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,738 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,340 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 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

Milk: Forms the creamy, mellow body of the drink and carries the other flavours.
Brandy: Adds warmth and aroma, and its alcohol keeps the drink from tasting flat.
Egg: Adds richness and a light, frothy texture when beaten well.

“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.