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Sherry or Brandy and Milk
1 cup fresh milk 1 tablespoon brandy or rum 3/4 teaspoon sugar Nutmeg Dash of salt Prepare as "Rum and Milk." Serve in a cold glass and add a grating of nutmeg on top.
A single cold drink, essentially an unshaken milk punch. The title says sherry or brandy while the ingredient list says brandy or rum, which tells you the spirit is interchangeable at the maker's discretion.
- The missing cross-referenceThe method is delegated to "Rum and Milk," a neighbouring entry not reproduced here, so the mixing order and whether anything is warmed cannot be recovered from this page alone.
- "Fresh milk"In 1914 this distinguished milk from condensed, evaporated or dried milk, all common in the pantry. Whole pasteurized milk is the modern equivalent; skim gives a thin, watery drink.
- Dissolving the sugarThree-quarters of a teaspoon of granulated sugar will sit at the bottom of a cold glass. Use superfine sugar, or a little simple syrup, and stir before the milk goes in.
- The saltNot a flavour in its own right at this quantity. It sharpens the perception of sweetness and cuts the flatness of plain cold milk, the same reason salt goes into a custard.
- NutmegGrate it fresh over the surface just before serving. Pre-ground nutmeg loses its volatiles quickly and will taste dusty against milk.
- YieldOne glass, roughly 8 oz. The tablespoon of spirit is about a third of a standard modern 1.5 oz measure, so this is a mild drink by present-day expectations.
Spirits stirred into cold milk belonged to the sickroom as much as the bar. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century domestic manuals routinely filed brandy and milk, rum and milk, and egg-and-wine drinks under invalid cookery or beverages, prescribing them for the convalescent, the sleepless and the exhausted on the reasoning that milk supplied nourishment while the alcohol acted as a stimulant and a way of getting the milk down. The same logic produced milk punch, which survives in New Orleans as a brunch drink and in Britain as a clarified curiosity. That such a drink appears in a book called Meatless Cookery is a reminder of what "meatless" meant in the period: not vegetarianism as a philosophy so much as a practical programme for replacing the nourishment of meat with milk, eggs, cheese, nuts and pulses, at a moment when meat was expensive and, within a few years, subject to wartime conservation campaigns.