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Drink

Milk Punch

A sweet alcoholic beverage made with rum, lemon, milk, water, sugar, and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the rum

  1. Steep the rinds of 18 lemons in 1 quart of rum for 3 days, covered.

Make the punch

  1. Add 3 more quarts of rum, the juice of the lemons, 5 quarts of water, and 5 pounds of sugar.

  2. Stir in 2 quarts of boiling milk.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 2 hours, covered.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag and bottle for use.

  5. Add a few bitter almonds.

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 + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Rum + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

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

  3. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Rum + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Lemon rinds
Give the punch its aromatic lemon oil flavour as they steep in the rum.
Rum
Carries the lemon oils and gives the punch its spirited base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and helps the milk curdle and clear.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Boiling milk
Curdles with the acid, and the curds carry off impurities so the punch clarifies.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling milk. The milk must be added to the acidic mixture while very hot so it curdles properly. The curds then trap sediment, and straining through a jelly bag removes them to leave a clear punch.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, sugar, milk, almond. 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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