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Drink

Verder, or Milk Punch

A citrus 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
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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 peels

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

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

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

Make the punch

  1. Squeeze the fruit into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Add 4 quarts of boiling water and 1 quart of hot milk to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the rum or brandy.

  4. Strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  5. 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

Whole milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid, clarifying the punch and softening its sharpness.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and draws flavor out of the citrus peel.
Rum or brandy
Extracts citrus oils from the peel and carries the aroma and alcohol of the punch.
Oranges
Provide juice and aromatic oils for sweetness and fragrance.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic oils that brighten the punch.

The step that matters

Strain through a jelly bag until clear. Milk curdles in acidic citrus, forming solids that cloud the punch. Straining slowly through a fine jelly bag removes those curds so the liquid runs clear.

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.

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