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Drink

Milk Punch

A chilled beverage made with milk, sugar, water, and brandy or rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Milk Punch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the sugar in enough water.

  2. Add the milk and stir well.

  3. Slowly pour in the brandy or rum while stirring constantly.

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. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the creamy body of the punch and mellows the sharpness of the spirit.
Brandy or rum
Provides the main flavor and aroma of the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the alcohol.

The step that matters

Pouring in the brandy or rum. Adding the spirit slowly while stirring constantly helps it blend evenly into the milk instead of splitting or clumping.

“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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