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Punch Milk
Cut off the thin yellow part of four fresh lemons and a Seville orange, and be careful not to take any of the white pith of the fruit, or it will make the punch bitter. Pour over this rind a pint of Jamaica rum, and let it stand, closely covered, for twelve hours. Strain the liquor, and mix with it a pint of lemon-juice and two pints of cold water, in which a pound of refined sugar has been dissolved, and add the whites of two eggs, beaten to a froth, three pints more of rum, a grated nutmeg, a pint of Madeira, a pint of strong green tea, and a quarter of a pint of maraschino. Mix thoroughly, and pour over all a pint of milk, boiling hot. Let the punch stand a little time, then strain it through a flannel jelly-bag until it is quite bright, and either use it at once, or bottle it to put away.
This is a clarified milk punch — the hot milk is not an enrichment but a filtering agent, and everything else in the method serves that end. Made properly it comes out clear, amber and keeps for months.
- The hinge: let the curds do the workWhen the boiling milk hits the citrus juice and rum it curdles at once, and the curds trap the tannins, oils and egg protein that cloud the punch. Pour it in, then leave the mixture undisturbed for an hour or more; do not stir or break up the curd, and never squeeze the bag when straining or the liquid will go cloudy again.
- StrainingA flannel jelly-bag is a cone of napped wool; damp muslin, a jelly bag or a large paper coffee filter all work. Pour the first ladleful through slowly to build a bed of curd on the cloth, then return any cloudy liquid to the bag and let it drip. Expect several hours, and expect to filter twice.
- YieldThe volumes total about ten pints before straining -- five quarts, or close to six litres in imperial measure -- and it loses perhaps a pint to the curd. That is fifty-odd small punch cups: this was written for a party, or for bottling.
- Seville orangeA bitter marmalade orange, in the shops only for a short midwinter season, roughly late December to February. Zest from half a grapefruit plus an ordinary orange is the usual stand-in; the point is aromatic bitterness in the peel, not sweetness.
- Jamaica rumIn this period that meant dark, pungent pot-still rum, often at well over 40 per cent alcohol. A funky Jamaican overproof or a good dark pot-still rum gives the character the recipe assumes; a light column-still rum will taste thin here.
- Citrus quantitiesA pint of lemon juice takes roughly fifteen to twenty lemons, on top of the four you zest. "Refined sugar" is ordinary white sugar -- a pound is about 2 1/4 cups.
- Green tea"Strong" here means strong by Victorian standards, which was very strong indeed. Around a pint brewed at double the usual leaf, cooled, is right; over-steeped tea will bring in a bitterness the clarification cannot wholly remove.
- The egg whitesThey act as a fining agent, coagulating with the milk and carrying sediment out with it, so almost nothing remains in the finished drink. If the raw egg still concerns you, use pasteurised whites; alternatively omit them and rely on the milk alone, as many clarified punch recipes do.
- KeepingAt roughly a fifth to a quarter alcohol by volume, and thoroughly acidic, the strained punch keeps well in filled, sealed bottles. Refrigerate rather than trusting a cellar, and serve cold in small measures — it drinks far more gently than it is.
Clarified milk punch belongs to the long eighteenth-century vogue for punch, and the trick of curdling milk into a spirit to strip it clear is generally traced to English recipes of that era; a version is often attributed to Aphra Behn, and Benjamin Franklin is known to have passed a milk punch recipe to a correspondent in the 1760s. The appeal was practical as much as gustatory: bottled, the stuff travelled and kept, so a household could make punch in October and serve it clear and bright at Christmas without a bowl to mix or ice to fetch. By the time Cassell's compiled its dictionary the fashion was fading, and the recipe reads as an heirloom — the extravagant list of rum, Madeira, maraschino and green tea reflecting a period when a well-stocked sideboard was itself the display. Green tea in a punch is a good marker of date: its use in British punch-making is well attested, and it contributes tannin that helps the clarification along.