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Milk Punch

A citrus-infused milk punch made with rum, sugar, and hot milk, steeped with lemon and orange rinds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the spirit

  1. Thinly pare the rind off the lemons and oranges.

  2. Steep the rinds in the rum, brandy, or whisky for 24 hours.

Make the punch

  1. Add the sugar, water, grated nutmeg, and lemon juice; stir until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Pour the boiling hot milk over the mixture and let it stand, covered, for 12 hours.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag until clear and bottle it.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rum, brandy, or whisky
Carries the citrus oils and gives the punch its alcoholic body.
New milk
Curdles with the acid and, as it settles, clarifies the punch as it is strained.
Refined sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Supplies acidity that curdles the milk and brightens the flavour.
Lemons and seville oranges
Their rinds, steeped in the spirit, supply aromatic citrus oils.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling hot milk over the mixture. Hot milk meeting the acidic mixture curdles its proteins, which then trap cloudy particles as they settle. Letting it stand covered for the full 12 hours lets the curd form and settle properly, so the straining step can produce a clear result.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, rum, sugar, 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.

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