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
Directions
Sweeten the milk to taste.
Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of brandy.
Add pounded ice.
Shake well and serve in a glass.
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.
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Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,738 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweet, rich milk
- Provides the creamy body and richness that the brandy is blended into.
- Best brandy
- Supplies the main spirit flavour and aroma.
- Pounded ice
- Chills the drink and slightly dilutes it as it melts.
The step that matters
Shake well. Shaking mixes the brandy evenly through the milk and chills the drink quickly. If it is not shaken enough, the spirit can stay unevenly distributed and the drink will be less smooth and cold throughout.
“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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