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Mxlk Punch

A punch made by steeping lemon rinds in brandy, then mixing with sugar, water, nutmeg, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mxlk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Steep the rinds of 9 lemons in 2 quarts of brandy for 18 hours.

  2. Mix the strained juice of the lemons with 1 ½ pounds of sugar and 5 pints of water.

  3. Add 1 grated nutmeg to the mixture.

  4. Boil 1 quart of milk until hot, then add it to the mixture.

  5. Strain the punch through a jelly bag before serving.

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. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  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

Lemon rinds
Steeping in brandy extracts the aromatic oils and flavour from the peel.
Brandy
Acts as the spirit base that extracts lemon flavour and gives the punch its strength.
Sugar
Sweetens the punch and balances the acidity of the lemon juice.
Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acidic lemon juice, which clarifies the punch as it is strained.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk. Milk must be boiled and then added to the acidic mixture so it curdles in a controlled way. Adding it cold or unevenly can leave the punch cloudy or lumpy. The curds are what the jelly bag then filters out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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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