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Cinnamon and Milk
1 cup milk Stick cinnamon Sugar 1 teaspoon brandy Boil the milk with a stick of cinnamon to flavor it for ten minutes and add the sugar. Serve cold with the brandy.
A single-serving spiced milk, closer to a cordial or a sickroom drink than a modern beverage. The whole of it turns on infusing the cinnamon long enough without scorching the milk.
- Use low heat, not a rolling boilTen minutes of hard boiling in a thin pan will scorch the milk solids and give the drink a burnt edge that no amount of sugar hides. Hold it at a bare simmer in a heavy saucepan, or set it over a double boiler, and stir now and then.
- Which cinnamonA "stick of cinnamon" in an older book may well mean cassia, the thick dark rolled bark sold in most supermarkets, rather than Ceylon cinnamon, the fragile many-layered quill, which is milder and more floral. Either works; cassia gives the more assertive flavour. A stick of a few inches is about right for a cup of milk.
- Sugar is unmeasuredNo quantity is given. One to two teaspoons per cup suits most palates; add it after the infusion so you can taste as you go, and stir until fully dissolved while the milk is still warm.
- Strain and chillLift out the cinnamon before cooling, or the flavour keeps deepening and turns medicinal. Chill thoroughly — served lukewarm this is unpleasant. A skin will form as it cools; strain again or whisk it smooth before serving.
- Add the brandy coldThe brandy goes in at the end, off the heat, so none of it cooks away. A teaspoon is a flavouring rather than a drink; omit it entirely and the recipe still stands, which is presumably why it is listed last.
- YieldOne cup, one serving. It scales directly: multiply the milk, and judge the cinnamon by taste rather than multiplying it stick for stick.
Spiced and sweetened milk drinks run through English and American domestic cookery for centuries, often filed under invalid cookery: warm or chilled milk was one of the few things a convalescent was thought able to keep down, and cinnamon was held to settle the stomach as well as make the milk palatable. The spoonful of brandy belongs to the same tradition, where spirits were treated as a restorative rather than a pleasure, and similar drinks appear among nineteenth-century posset, caudle and milk punch recipes.