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Milk Punch

A citrusy brandy punch with milk, sugar, water, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep the rinds of 9 lemons in 2 quarts of brandy for 18 hours.

  2. Mix the strained juice of the lemons with 1.5 pounds of sugar, 5 pints of water, and 1 grated nutmeg.

  3. Add 1 quart of boiling hot milk to the mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Brandy + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Milk
Hot milk curdles and clarifies the punch, removing harsh flavours and leaving it smooth.
Lemons
Juice supplies sharp acidity, and the steeped rinds add aromatic citrus oils.
Brandy
Extracts flavour from the lemon rinds and gives the punch its alcoholic base.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the lemon juice with sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling hot milk. Milk must be added while boiling hot so its proteins curdle and bind impurities, which are then removed when the punch is strained. Adding cold or lukewarm milk will not clarify the liquid properly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, nutmeg, 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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