In this episode, we’ll feature a milk punch recipe created by everyone’s favorite syphilitic founding father, Ben Franklin. To make it, you’ll need:
One 25 oz bottle of Cognac
½ whole nutmeg (grated) (or ½ tsp ground nutmeg)
The peels of 8 lemons
16 oz water
8 oz lemon juice
12 oz whole milk (this is important – any other type of milk won’t work as well)
¾ cup of sugar
This is about a 2-day process, so if you’re smart, you’ll start on a Wednesday evening in preparation for having your drink finished and chilled for Friday night.
Day 1: Peel your 8 lemons and then let the peels infuse into the Cognac in a large mason jar. This is the easy part.
Day 2: Strain out those lemon peels and discard them. Then get out two saucepans: a large one and a small one. In the large saucepan, combine your cognac, water, sugar, nutmeg, and lemon juice, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Then, put your milk in the small saucepan and heat it gently until it’s just about to boil. When it boils, add the milk to the rest of the mixture, give it a gentle stir, and then place it in the fridge (covered) for several hours or overnight.
Once you’ve let your mixture sit for a little while, you’ll notice that the acid in the lemon juice has denatured the proteins in the milk, separating the solid curds from the sugary, liquid whey. This is the “sciencey” part of milk punch because you’re basically using these proteins to strip away any particulate matter that makes the drink cloudy.
Now it’s time to strain, and the problem with straining is that most people either have very rough strainers (like sieves or Chinoises) or very fine strainers like coffee filters. The problem with this is as follows: If you strain your milk punch from a sieve into a coffee filter, you’ll only catch the largest particles, and anything that escapes will immediately clog your coffee filter.
So, what we’d recommend doing is purchasing something called a nut milk bag or a jelly bag. These are usually made of nylon, which means they’re super re-usable, and they serve as an excellent intermediate step between your rough pass filter and your finishing coffee filter. And for anyone who’s rolling their eyes right now thinking that the nut milk bag is overkill – that’s fine. You’ll have plenty of time to reconsider your stance while you’re staring at a coffee filter filled with goop.
At the end of the milk clarification process, you should have a golden-colored punch that is completely clear, and the real mind-boggling thing about this beverage is that it doesn’t look like there’s milk in it – and yet you still get this creamy, rich mouthfeel from the whey. For more in-depth info on the history of milk punch and even more tips for making it at home, check out Episode 76, which I’ll link to in the show notes page.
One last piece of housekeeping for this recipe: clarified milk punch still contains lactose, so it’s unfortunately still off the menu for folks with sensitivity to that compound – but for the rest of us, it’s a fun way to bend the relationship between what you see in your glass and how you think it will taste.
What is Molecular Mixology?
Molecular mixology is a trend that builds upon the molecular gastronomy craze popularized by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià (elBulli) and British chef Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck) in the early 2000s. In general, molecular gastronomy is characterized by manipulation of physical or chemical forces (temperature, texture, pressure, chemical composition, etc.) to deconstruct or otherwise transform the ingredients in a dish. Likewise, in molecular mixology, many of these techniques are applied to cocktails. Some popular methods and ingredients in the molecular mixology space include:
