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Brooks Punch
Wash and peel very thin two dozen lemons and squeeze the juice over the grated rinds. Let stand overnight, and in the morning add two glasses of grape jelly. Add four cupfuls of sugar to three quarts of milk, and heat slowly until the sugar is dissolved. Pour over the fruit juices. When cold strain through a jelly bag, being careful not to squeeze it. Pour into a punch bowl and serve with cracked ice.
This is a clarified milk punch with the spirits left out — the milk is meant to curdle on the citrus, and the whey that drips through the bag is the drink. Nothing about it works unless you resist the urge to squeeze the bag.
- Do not squeeze the jelly bagThe whole point is a translucent, silky liquid; pressing the curds through clouds it permanently and gives it a chalky texture. Hang the bag and let it drip, which may take several hours, and pour the first cloudy runnings back through the bed of curds.
- The curdling is intentionalTwenty-four lemons' worth of juice hitting three quarts of milk will break it into curds and whey immediately. That is correct — the curd traps the milk fat and proteins and carries the harshness of the zest out with it.
- "Two glasses of grape jelly"A glass here most likely means a jelly tumbler, the small straight-sided jar jelly was set in; these commonly ran six to eight ounces, so about a cup each. Two cups of grape jelly is a reasonable reading, though the original is genuinely imprecise; stir it into the juice until dissolved rather than leaving lumps to clog the bag.
- Peeling and standing"Peel very thin" means zest only, no white pith. The grated rinds standing overnight in the juice extracts the citrus oils, though no sugar is added at this stage, so it is not strictly an oleo-saccharum. Cover it and refrigerate rather than leaving it on the counter.
- Heat the milk gentlyWarm the milk and sugar only until the sugar dissolves; the recipe gives no temperature. Boiling gives a cooked, scalded-milk flavour that survives straining.
- Chill before straining"When cold" is not decorative — cold curds are firmer and filter far better, and the finished punch should go back to the refrigerator until service.
- YieldThree quarts of milk plus the juice, sugar and jelly makes well over a gallon before straining, and some volume is lost with the curds; the original states no yield.
- KeepingWithout the brandy that traditionally preserved this style, it is a fresh dairy drink. Use it within two days and keep it cold throughout.
Clarified milk punch is an eighteenth-century English and colonial American formula — the version copied in Benjamin Franklin's hand is the most often cited example — in which citrus juice curdles milk, the curds are strained out, and the remaining whey carries sugar, spice and a great deal of brandy or rum. Because the spirit both preserved and flavoured it, the drink kept for months, which is much of why it was made. What appears here is that technique stripped of its alcohol, with grape jelly supplying the fruit sweetness and colour that the spirit used to provide.