The Escoffier milk punch (with a comment) by Ambrose Heath.

As with nearly anything Heath, his recipe for milk punch “To drink with Turtle Soup” or by our lights anything or nothing at all is crystalline, like the punch itself, and requires little elaboration. He starts with a simple syrup made

“from half a pint [imperial, or 10 oz] of water and three and a half ounces of sugar…. Set to infuse in this syrup two Orange and two Lemon zests (that is, the coloured part only of the peel). Strain at the end of ten minutes, and add half a pint of Rum [use something dark but not too dear], a fifth of a pint of Kirsch, two-thirds of a pint of Milk, and the juice of three Oranges and three Lemons. Mix thoroughly. Let it stand for three hours; filter and serve cold.”

Notes:

-Other than his own (unnecessary) parenthetical, Heath has reproduced the Escoffier recipe verbatim. It is not easy to locate within his vast Guide to the Fine Art of Cookery. Instead of listing his milk punch with the other drinks, Escoffier tucked it away as an addendum to the elaborate recipe for turtle soup, the longest and most complex in the book. It is so complex that Escoffier uncharacteristically recommends buying it “ready-made” when “a comparatively small quantity of this soup is required.”

-Needless, we hope, to say, all the measurements and not only the bracketed one for the water are imperial. A pint holds twenty ounces.

-Escoffier may have been French but his long time in London altered his sensibility. Like the turtle soup he prepared for grand occasions, clarified milk punch is ineffably English.

-Most recipes for milk punch, including Heath’s for Norfolk Punch, steep the infusables longer but this version does not lack for flavor.

-Kirsch and its equally unappealing cousin Heering would be Banned Substances at bfia if not for its utility in building a balanced milk punch. Due to the alchemical mystery of the transformative process, the flavor of cherry, ordinarily cloying, adds a layer of surprising nuance to the punch.