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Milk Funqh

A citrus and rum milk punch made by steeping fruit rinds in alcohol, sweetening, adding milk, and straining.

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

Milk Funqh

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the alcohol

  1. Remove the rind from the lemons and oranges and steep in the alcohol for 24 hours.

Make the punch

  1. Add sugar, water, grated nutmeg, and lemon juice; stir until sugar dissolves.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the mixture and let it stand covered for 12 hours.

  3. Strain through a jelly bag until clear and bottle.

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

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

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

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rum + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rum, brandy, or whisky
Carries the citrus oils and acts as the base spirit that gives the punch its body and strength.
New milk
Curdles when poured hot, and the curds trap impurities so straining leaves the punch clear.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that works with the milk to curdle it and brightens the flavour.
Refined sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the citrus and the bite of the alcohol.
Lemons
Rind steeped in alcohol supplies aromatic citrus oils for flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the mixture. Hot milk curdles when it meets the acidic citrus mixture. The curds gather up proteins and fine particles, and straining through a jelly bag removes them, which is what makes the punch clear. Milk that is not hot enough will not curdle properly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, rum, 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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