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Drink

Punch, Milk

A sweet alcoholic beverage made with lemon peel, brandy, sugar, water, milk, spices, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Punch, Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the brandy

  1. Fill a bottle with lemon peel and add brandy until full.

  2. Cork the bottle and let it sit in the sun for 2-3 days.

Make the punch

  1. Pour out the lemon peel brandy and mix it with sugar, water, brandy, boiling milk, spices, and lemon juice.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Strain the mixture until clear.

  4. Bottle it immediately.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemon peel
Gives the punch its lemon aroma and flavour as it steeps in the brandy.
Brandy
Provides the alcoholic base and carries the flavours of the lemon and spices.
Boiling milk
Curdles with the acidic lemon juice, and the solids settle out, leaving the punch clearer and smoother.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the punch and causes the milk to curdle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice and the strength of the brandy.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk to the lemon mixture. Milk curdles when it meets acid, and the proteins clump and carry sediment down with them. The mixture must be given time to settle and then strained carefully, or the punch stays cloudy and the curds end up in the bottle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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