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Drink

Milk Punch to Keep

A chilled beverage made from oranges, lemons, sugar, water, milk, and rum-soaked peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Milk Punch to Keep

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

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible, then grate them to extract the flavor.

  2. Soak the peel in a bottle of rum or brandy for 24 hours, tightly sealed.

Make the punch

  1. Squeeze the juice from the fruit into a large bowl with the sugar.

  2. Add the hot water and fresh milk to the mixture, stirring well.

  3. Incorporate the soaked rum or brandy, then strain the mixture through a jelly bag until clear.

  4. Bottle and cork the punch 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
Provide citrus peel and juice that give the punch its aromatic, bright flavour.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Fresh milk
Adds richness and body, and softens the sharpness of the citrus through protein curdling.
Rum or brandy
Extracts aromatic oils from the peel and adds alcohol flavour and preservation.

The step that matters

Straining through a jelly bag until clear. Adding milk to acidic citrus juice causes proteins to curdle. Straining through a fine jelly bag removes the curds, so the punch becomes clear rather than 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.

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