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Drink

Norfolk Punch

A punch made with French brandy, citrus peels, sugar water, citrus juice, milk, and aged in a barrel.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Norfolk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and mix

  1. Infuse the peels of 30 lemons and 30 oranges in 20 quarts of French brandy for 12 hours.

  2. Mix 30 quarts of cold boiled water with 15 pounds of double-refined sugar until well combined.

  3. Pour the sugar water over the brandy and peels, then add the juice of the oranges and 24 lemons.

Clarify and age

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a clean barrel that has held spirits.

  2. Add 2 quarts of new milk and stir well.

  3. Seal the barrel tightly and let it stand in a warm cellar for 6 weeks.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the liquor, ensuring the bottles are clean and dry, and use high-quality corks.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  4. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Brandy + milktop 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

French brandy
Provides the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the citrus oils and flavour.
Lemon peel and orange peel
Supply aromatic oils that flavour the spirit during the initial infusion.
Lemon juice and orange juice
Add acidity and bright citrus flavour that balances the sugar and spirit.
Double-refined sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity and alcohol of the punch.
New milk
Softens the punch and helps clarify it as it rests, giving a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and resting in the barrel. Milk added to a citrus punch curdles its proteins, which settle and carry suspended particles down, clearing the liquor. Stirring it in well and then leaving the barrel sealed and undisturbed lets this clarifying happen evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, orange, 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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