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Cambridge Milk Punch
Put the thin rind of half a small lemon into a pint of new milk, with twelve or fourteen good-sized lumps of sugar. Let it boil very slowly to draw out the flavour of the lemon, then take it from the fire, and stir into it (the rind having been removed), the yolk of an egg mixed with a table-spoonful of cold milk, two table-spoonfuls of brandy, and four of rum. Whisk these thoroughly together, and when the mixture is frothed it is ready to serve. Time to prepare, half an hour. Probable cost, 5d., exclusive of the brandy and rum. Sufficient for a pint and a half of punch.
A hot, frothed milk punch of the sort kept for cold evenings and late arrivals. The whole thing turns on how the egg yolk goes in.
- The hinge: tempering the yolkSlacken the yolk with the tablespoon of cold milk first, then add it to the milk once the pan is off the heat but still very hot, whisking hard the entire time. Poured into a boiling pan, or stirred in lazily, it scrambles and the punch is finished.
- Lumps of sugarLoaf sugar was broken into lumps by hand and sizes varied, but a lump is usually reckoned at about a teaspoon, which would put twelve to fourteen somewhere around 50-60 g, a scant third of a cup. That is sweet by modern taste for a pint of milk; start at 40 g and adjust.
- New milkFresh whole milk, unskimmed and unhomogenised, straight from the dairy. Whole milk is the right substitute; anything lower in fat gives a thinner, less rich punch.
- Thin rindPare the zest off in strips with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns the infusion bitter over a long, slow heating.
- "Boil very slowly"Read this as a bare simmer with the surface barely moving, for ten to fifteen minutes. A rolling boil scalds the milk and drives off the lemon oil rather than drawing it out.
- The spiritsTwo tablespoons brandy and four of rum is about 90 ml of spirit in total, going into roughly 570 ml of milk. Add them off the heat, after the yolk, as the recipe directs, so less of the alcohol is driven off. A dark Jamaican-style rum is probably closest to what a British kitchen of the period would have had.
- FrothingA balloon whisk works, but a milk frother or a stick blender gives a better head. Serve immediately in warmed glasses or cups; the foam collapses within a minute or two.
- YieldA pint and a half, around 850 ml, which is two generous servings or three modest ones.
- The eggThe yolk is set by residual heat rather than held at temperature, so it is not reliably pasteurised. Use a pasteurised yolk if serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised.
Milk punch — spirits, sugar, spice or citrus and milk — is an English drink of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the clarified version, in which the milk is curdled with citrus and strained out to leave a clear silky liquor, is commonly traced to a receipt attributed to Aphra Behn and appears in a number of eighteenth-century manuscript receipt books. The Cambridge version is the unclarified, hot, egg-thickened branch of the family, closer to a posset or a caudle than to a cocktail, and its name attaches it to the university. Cassell's, compiling for middle-class households in the later nineteenth century, files it among the drinks a hostess might make herself at short notice, and prices it accordingly: fivepence for the milk, lemon and sugar, with the brandy and rum quietly left off the reckoning.