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Powdered Milk Punch
Put in a shaker two teaspoonfuls of sugar, two tablespoonfuls of whole milk powder, two tablespoonfuls of crushed ice and a tablespoonful of rum flavoring. Add enough water to fill up the glass you wish to serve the punch in and shake until the ingredients are well mixed. Flavor, if preferred, with chocolate or vanilla syrup. Pour into glass and serve.
A shaker drink with no cooking and few decisions, but two of the four ingredients behave differently now than they did when this was written.
- Rum flavoring is not rum extract, quiteA tablespoon of modern rum extract is far too much; today's extracts are concentrated and alcohol-based, and that quantity will read as harsh and medicinal. Start with half a teaspoon and add by drops.
- Whole milk powderStill sold, though dry skim milk is the more common supermarket item and will give a thinner, less satisfying drink. Standard reconstitution is roughly 1/4 cup powder to 1 cup water, so two tablespoons in a filled 8 oz glass produces something noticeably lighter than whole milk.
- Dissolve before you diluteThe one step that decides the result. Shake the sugar, powder and a small splash of water into a smooth slurry first, then top up. Powder dumped into a full glass clumps and the lumps never break.
- Ice quantityTwo tablespoons of crushed ice is about one ice cube's worth and is there to chill, not to fill. It will melt into the drink and thin it further, which is worth allowing for when you judge the milk powder.
- Glass sizeThe recipe measures by "the glass you wish to serve the punch in" and never states a size; a 6 to 8 oz tumbler is a reasonable assumption for scaling the other quantities. Yield is one drink.
- Sugar and syrup togetherIf you take the chocolate or vanilla syrup option, cut or omit the two teaspoons of sugar; commercial syrups are sweet enough to carry the drink on their own.
- Serve at onceReconstituted milk powder separates on standing, and the cooked-milk character of the powder becomes more noticeable as the drink warms. Shake and pour, and do not hold it in the shaker.
Milk punch, in its full form, is milk, sugar, spirit and nutmeg, and it is most firmly associated with New Orleans, where brandy and bourbon versions remain a fixture of morning drinking. This version has the shape but not the substance: flavoring stands in for the rum, which fits the American Prohibition years, though alcohol-free versions of spirituous drinks also belong to a longer temperance tradition. The dried whole milk it depends on was a relatively modern convenience at the time, spray-drying having made shelf-stable milk powder more widely available in the early decades of the twentieth century.