On the mystery of English milk punch.

English milk punch became a drink of choice in the Anglosphere for over a hundred years beginning with the seventeenth century. Its vogue evaporated with the second half of the nineteenth century, one more shard of evidence indicating that the Victorians displayed considerably worse judgment in things cultural and culinary than their raucous forebears.

In 1862, the immortal Jerry Thomas did his part to keep milk punch barely alive in his pathbreaking and preservationist How to Mix Drinks: His curiosity and cosmopolitan interest in things alcoholic was unbounded. Another outlier, the estimable Ambrose Heath, published recipes, only two, for milk punch in 1939. It is from his Good Drinks via, he confesses, Escoffier’s nineteenth century Guide to Modern Cookery, who suggests “to drink” it with the equally Old School “Turtle Soup.”

Heath describes his book as a “collection of divers drinks… offered for all those occasions when drinking is desirable” which, in his estimation, are pretty much all occasions;

“on a winter’s evening by the fire, on the shady verge of the tennis-court, at a party, in a pub,; with friends, or acquaintances and those even dearer, wherever they happen to be together: to the advancement of the brewer and the wine merchant, and the confusion of all dull dogs.”

The punch in question is not murky. Instead, the addition of hot milk to a cold combination of spirits, citrus, sometimes wine or fortified wine and flavorings produces an ethereal clarified drink. Straining the initial curdled mess through a jellybag or coffee filter clarifies the punch and gives it a beguiling viscous body from the whey while the curd from the milk remains behind after absorbing the volatile compounds and impurities in the other ingredients. As a result, even if an ingredient or ingredient has a dark hue--Port, dark rum or black tea for examples--the milk punch emerges pale.

The flavor of milk punch is both subtle and big, a conundrum that would justify seventeenth century alchemists like Culpeper and Newton in their conviction. The earliest recorded recipe for milk punch dates to a kitchen manuscript from 1711. Franklin had a recipe and so do we.

Sipping a Pandan Punch at the Ivy bar.

The punch has been enjoying something of a revival in the United States, less so in the United Kingdom but the ever reassuring The Ivy, a restaurant favored by the theatrical, cultural and political chatterers where shepherds’ pie remains the signature dish and all are welcomed with equal warmth, offers a ‘Pandan Punch.’ “Served crystal clear and on the rocks,” they make it from Cuban rum, “more rum,” cognac, lemon spice and its namesake pandan, a green leaf indigenous to southeast Asia that has a sort of herbaceous vanilla flavor. Sublime.

Our essay on the history and nature of punches, including milk punch, appears in the lyrical.