Benjamin Franklin’s clarified milk punch.

Franklin liked his punch with a pronounced pungency that he produced by squeezing and zesting a high proportion of citrus. His recipe results in a drink of particular appeal to twenty-first century palates. Its provenance is traced in the lyrical.

• 3 cups decent brandy
• zest of 5 or 6 lemons
• 1 cup lemon juice
• ½ a freshly grated nutmeg
• about ½ cup sugar, more or less
• 2 cups water
• 1½ cups whole milk

1. Steep the zest in the brandy for a good 24 hours, then strain away the zest.
2. Add the juice, nutmeg, sugar and water to the brandy.
3. Boil the milk and pour it into the brandy mixture.
4. Let the mess (it will be hideously curdled) stand for about 2 hours.
5. Strain the punch through a jellybag or coffee filter cradled in a strainer (it will take some time), then bottle the punch and refrigerate it.
6. Serve the punch cold over a single big bar or sphere of ice.

Notes:

-Franklin liked to keeps a lot of punch to hand. His manuscript recipe results in well over a gallon of it. We are grateful to the American Antiquarian Society, an indispensable institution despite its name evocative of genealogists due to its location off the academically historical path in Worcester, Massachusetts, for shrinking the amounts in authentic proportion. We have shrunk the AAS recipe even more, by half. You still will get a generous liter of punch.

-Portuguese or Spanish brandy is good value for money and good for making punch. Whatever brandy you choose you need not break the bank but avoid anything rotgut French or factory farmed American like the ghastly ‘E&J.’

-Nothing but whole milk will do; you even could substitute cream for some or all of it but reduced fat abominations will not properly filter and embody the punch.