Milk Punch Cocktail

Milk Punch Cocktail Story

Milk Punch, like the category of punch itself, has multiple identities, interpretations, and variations, depending on who you speak to and in which time period you did. Perhaps more than any other tradition of punch making, Milk Punch can be nice and simple or extremely fancy. New Orleans lays claim to a creamy, ruffian concoction of spirit, often a combination of whiskey, rum, or brandy, sugar, and milk simply shaken and served on the rocks, bearing more than a slight resemblance to a White Russian. A creamy, lemon-scented punch made with the pungent Indonesian rice and sugarcane spirit Batavia Arrack was ostensibly created by the seventeenth-century playwright Aphra Behn, who strained out the milk solids after boiling them, effectively engaging in one of the first recorded instances of molecular mixology. American recipes from Jerry Thomas’s era of the late 1800s recommend adding sherry or infusing citrus into the base spirit. But whichever preparation method is employed, the drink would be incomplete without its iconic garnish of freshly grated nutmeg, a tradition which dates back to the punch’s seventeenth century origins in Scotland.