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 ↓
Milk Punch, to Keep
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse the rum
Pare the peels of the oranges and lemons as thin as possible and place them in a tub or pan.
Pour the rum over the peels.
Cover the vessel and let it sit for 24 hours.
Boil the 6 quarts of water.
Let the water cool.
Add the cooled water to the strained rum.
Remove the peels.
Make the syrup and combine
Boil the sugar in a small amount of water to create a syrup.
Froth the syrup with the whites and shells of the eggs.
Let the mixture boil again.
Strain the mixture.
Once cooled, stir the syrup into the clear juice of the oranges and lemons.
Add the syrup-stirred citrus juice to the rum and water mixture while stirring continuously.
Heat the milk until hot but not boiling.
Let the milk cool slightly.
Stir the milk into the mixture.
Age and bottle
Pour everything into a cask or stone bottle.
Cork the bottle well.
Let it sit for six months.
Bottle the aged punch in wine bottles.
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.
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Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,634 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Rum + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together967 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together801 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,908 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Supply aromatic peel oils and bright acidic juice for flavour.
- Lemons
- Add sharp acidity and citrus aroma that balances the sweetness.
- Old rum
- Extracts flavour from the peels and forms the spirit base of the punch.
- Loaf sugar
- Adds sweetness that softens the acidity and rum's heat.
- Eggs
- Whites form a froth that gathers particles so the punch can be clarified.
- Milk
- Its proteins bind fine sediment as they cool, helping the punch clear.
The step that matters
Stirring in the warm milk. The milk must be hot but not boiling and cooled slightly before stirring. As its proteins set, they trap cloudy sediment, which then settles so the punch clears during aging.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, rum, sugar, egg, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Pineapplefits about as well
- Orangethe original
- Figfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, rum, sugar, egg, 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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