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Milk Punch

A citrus-based punch made with rum, brandy, sugar, water, and hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare the oranges and lemons as thin as possible and grate them with the sugar to extract the flavor.

  2. Squeeze the fruit into 2 pounds of sugar.

Steep and mix

  1. Steep the peels in a quart of rum and a pint of brandy in a sealed container for 24 hours.

  2. Add 4 quarts of water and 1 quart of boiling milk.

  3. Stir in the rum and brandy mixture.

Strain and bottle

  1. Strain through a jelly bag until clear.

  2. Bottle and cork 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.

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. Rum + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together801 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oranges
Their peel oils add a bright, fragrant aroma to the punch.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw flavor from the grated peel.
Rum
Extracts flavor from the peels and adds alcohol for body and aroma.
Brandy
Extracts flavor from the peels and adds warmth and depth.
Milk
Its proteins curdle with the acid and trap sediment, clarifying the punch.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk and straining until clear. Milk proteins curdle when they meet the acidic citrus and rum mixture. The curds gather suspended particles and cloudy solids, which the jelly bag then catches. Adding the milk too early or skipping a full strain leaves the punch cloudy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, rum, brandy, 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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