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Verder, or Milk Punch

A citrus-infused milk punch made with oranges, lemons, sugar, water, milk, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Verder, or Milk Punch

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Verder, or Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peels

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible.

  2. Grate the peels with sugar to extract the flavor.

  3. Soak the peels in a bottle of rum or brandy for 24 hours.

Make and bottle the punch

  1. Squeeze the fruit into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Add 4 quarts of water and 1 quart of boiling hot milk; stir well.

  3. Mix in the rum or brandy and strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  4. Bottle immediately and seal tightly.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

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

  3. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

Oranges
Their peel and juice supply the main citrus aroma and flavor.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and helps draw flavor out of the peels.
New milk
Hot milk curdles on contact with the acidic juice, and straining removes the solids to clarify the punch.
Rum or brandy
Carries the citrus oils from the peels and gives the punch its alcoholic body.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling hot milk. Milk added to acidic citrus juice curdles, and the curds are what the jelly bag strains out to leave the punch clear. Stirring well helps the milk proteins coagulate evenly so the solids separate cleanly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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