Skip to main content
Drink

Another Way to Make Milk Punch

A cold milk punch made with sugar, lemon juice, brandy, water, lemon peel, and boiling milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the punch

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the strained juice of 36 lemons.

  2. Once settled, add the brandy, cold water, and lemon peel.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the mixture.

  4. Cover tightly and let it stand for 24 hours.

Strain and bottle

  1. Skim and strain through a thick jelly-bag.

  2. Bottle and store; it improves with keeping.

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

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

  2. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Refined sugar
Provides sweetness and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour, and its acid curdles the milk as it clarifies the punch.
Brandy
Provides the spirit base and preserves the punch during storage.
Boiling milk
Its proteins coagulate on contact with acid, trapping impurities that are then strained out, clarifying the liquid.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the mixture. The hot milk must be added to the acidic mixture so its proteins curdle and carry sediment out when strained. Pouring it in carelessly or straining too early leaves the punch cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, 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