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Milk Punch Syrup
Brandy, 2 pints; Jamaica Rum, 2 pints; Condensed Milk, ½ pint; Plain Syrup, 4 pints.
This is a fountain formula rather than a drink: a bottled syrup that a dispenser drew on by the ounce, so it reads as a bare list of proportions. Nothing here needs cooking, but the order of mixing matters.
- Add the spirits last, and slowlyStir the condensed milk into the plain syrup until completely smooth, then pour in the brandy and rum in a thin stream while stirring. Dumping milk into a large volume of high-proof spirit shocks the casein and gives you a grainy, flecked syrup that never fully recovers.
- Plain syrupFountain "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" of the period was a heavy sugar syrup, far thicker than the 1:1 syrup most bars keep now; period formulas run from roughly one to two pounds of sugar per pint of water. Using a 1:1 syrup will give a thinner, noticeably less sweet result.
- Condensed milk means sweetened condensedIn fountain usage this is the tinned sweetened product, not evaporated milk. Substituting evaporated milk drops both the sugar and the preservative effect of that sugar.
- Jamaica rumA dark, high-ester pot-still rum, valued at the fountain for carrying flavor through dilution. A modern Jamaican dark rum is the closest available substitute; a light or spiced rum is not.
- YieldJust over a gallon of syrup — 8½ pints, or about 4 liters. Fountain practice was 1 to 1½ oz of syrup in a glass, filled with carbonated water or plain milk, so this batch dispenses roughly ninety to a hundred and thirty-five drinks. Scale to a quarter or an eighth for a household.
- Keeping itThe finished syrup lands somewhere near 20 percent alcohol by volume, and the sugar load is high, which is why the original assumes a bottle behind the counter. Refrigerate it anyway, keep it capped, and shake before use, since the milk solids settle.
- Carbonated water will thicken itCarbonated water may tighten it -- Soda water is mildly acidic and can tighten the milk proteins in the glass. Draw the soda with a coarse stream onto the syrup and serve at once rather than letting the glass stand.
Milk punch is much older than the soda fountain: spirits, sugar, milk and spice were being mixed in Britain and its colonies by the early eighteenth century, in both the clarified form, where the curdled milk is strained out to leave a clear liquor, and the plain unstrained form this syrup imitates. What the fountain did was industrialize it — instead of building each drink, the dispenser kept a keeping-syrup of spirit, sugar and tinned condensed milk and pulled an ounce at a time. Condensed milk made that possible; it had been a commercial product in the United States since the 1850s, and its sugar content let a dairy ingredient sit at room temperature on a marble counter. The presence of brandy and rum belongs to a period when spirits could still figure in American drug store dispensing; alcohol-free fountain versions of "milk punch" — milk, sugar, vanilla and grated nutmeg — appear in the fountain guides alongside spirituous ones, and became the standard form after Prohibition.