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Drink

Milk Punch

Milk Punch is a beverage made with lemon rinds, whisky, water, sugar, nutmeg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Soak the lemon rinds in 1 quart of whisky or rum for 3 days in a covered dish.

Make the punch

  1. Add 5 quarts of whisky and 3 quarts of boiling water to the sugar and dissolve.

  2. Mix in the lemon juice from the peeled lemons and the grated nutmegs.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of boiling milk and stir well.

Strain and bottle

  1. Let the mixture cool, then strain through a flannel bag until clear.

  2. Return the first quart to the bag if it is not clear and strain again.

  3. Bottle and cork the mixture well.

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.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Whisky + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Their rinds and juice supply the aromatic oils and sharp acidity that flavour the punch.
White sugar
Sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon and the alcohol.
Boiling milk
Milk proteins coagulate on contact with acid and are strained out, clarifying the punch.
Whisky or rum
Alcohol that extracts lemon oils and acts as the base spirit, giving body and preservation.
Grated nutmeg
Adds warm aromatic spice that complements the citrus and spirit.

The step that matters

Straining after adding the boiling milk. Hot milk curdles in the acidic lemon mixture, forming curds that cloud the punch. Letting it cool before straining through a flannel bag lets the curds settle and be filtered out, and straining again clears any haze that remains.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against whisky, sugar, nutmeg, 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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