Skip to main content
Drink

Verder, or Milk Punch

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
Jump to recipe ↓
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 flavour

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

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

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

  4. Squeeze the fruit into the sugar.

Make the punch

  1. Add 4 quarts of boiling‑hot water and 1 quart of milk.

  2. Stir in the rum or brandy mixture.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  4. Bottle and cork 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.

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 flavour.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that brightens the sweet punch.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws flavour out of the grated peel.
Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid and clarify, leaving the punch clear when strained.
Rum or brandy
Carries the citrus aroma and adds alcohol that helps preserve the punch.

The step that matters

Strain through a jelly bag until clear. Milk proteins curdle when they meet the citrus acid, and the curds must be fully caught by the jelly bag. Straining too early or too quickly leaves the punch cloudy.

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.

More milk punch recipes

Rum 15Cambridge 9Hot 3 See all 169 →

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes