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Milk Punch

A hot milk punch made with lemon, sugar, eggs, rum, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar

  1. Rub the lumps of sugar over the lemon rinds.

Make the punch

  1. Put the sugar into a saucepan with 2 quarts of milk and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in the remaining milk.

  3. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the egg yolks, rum, and brandy gradually.

  4. Return to the heat, stirring until the punch begins to froth.

Serve

  1. Serve hot; this punch will not keep.

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. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + brandytop 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk and add richness and a silky, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the body of the punch and carries the other flavours.
Rum
Adds alcohol and aroma, and helps flavour the punch.
Brandy
Adds alcohol and a warming, fruity aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the punch and, rubbed on lemon, carries in citrus oils.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks off the heat. Egg yolks scramble if they meet very hot milk directly. Removing the pan from the heat and adding the yolks gradually lets them blend smoothly and thicken gently.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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