An instructive ode to clarified milk punch from Christian Isobel Johnstone.

In her Cook and Housewife’s Manual written in 1827 under the pseudonym Mistress Margaret Dods, Christian Isobel Johnstone includes a number of recipes for clarified milk punch, a favorite of boozifiers during the long eighteenth century that, as Johnstone notes, has fallen into desuetude. One of them, in the characteristic anarchy of the Manual, is incongruously called L’ Eau de la Vie “communicated by a lady, who has contributed to this volume many useful and some rare receipts”--that is, Johnstone herself. (Johnstone 459n) It is dropped as one of many madcap footnotes and written in verse.

L'Eau de la Vie – The following rhyming receipt for compounding this pleasant liqueur is communicated by a lady, who has contributed to this volume many useful and some rare receipts: --

“Grown old, and grown stupid, you just think me fit
To transcribe from my grandmother’s book a receipt;
And comfort it is for a wight in distress,
To be still of some use: --he could scarce be of less.
Were greater his talents, fair Anne might command’
His head--if more worth than his heart or his hand.
Your mandates obeying, he sends with much glee,
The genuine receipt to make L’Eau de la Vie.
Take seven large oranges, and pare them as thin
As a water, or, what is much thinner, your skin:
Six ounces of sugar next take, and bear mind,
That the sugar be of the best double-refined.
Clear the sugar in near half a pint of spring water,
In the neat silver sauce pan you bought for your daughter.
Then a fourth of a pint, you must fully allow,
Of new milk, made as warm as it comes from the cow.
Put the rinds of the lemons, the milk, and the syrup,
In a jar, with the rum, and give them a stir up.
A full quart of old rum (French brandy is better,
And then, to your taste, you may add some perfume,
Goa-stone, or whatever you like in the room.
Let it stand thus ten days, but remember to shake it;
And the closer you stop it, the richer you make it.
Then filter through paper, ‘twill sparkle and rise,
Be as soft as your lips, and as bright as your eyes.
Last, bottle it up, and, believe me, the Vicar
Of E_______ himself never drank better liquor.
In a word, it excels, by a million of odds,
The nectar your sister presents to the gods!”