Benjamin Franklin’s Milk Punch
Reader ratingsBrandy steeped with lemon peel, then nutmeg, lemon, sugar and boiling milk, dripped clear through a jelly bag and bottled: Franklin’s 1763 receipt at a twelfth of the size.
- Recipe makes
- About 1.1 liters (our estimate), 8 small glasses
- Prep
- Cook
- Total
Includes 24 hours for the lemon peel to steep in the brandy, 2 hours’ standing once the milk is in, and about 3 hours to drip through the bag (our estimate).
Clear milk punch in a stemmed glass and a punch cup, with a corked bottle and a nutmeg grater.
The story behind the recipe
Benjamin Franklin’s milk punch is brandy, lemon, nutmeg and sugar, cleared with hot milk and a jelly bag. The receipt went to his friend James Bowdoin of Roxbury, Massachusetts, in October 1763. The brandy spends a day on lemon peel, and the milk, poured in at the end, splits into curds that the bag holds back until the punch runs clear.
A receipt for a friend
The sheet is now at the Massachusetts Historical Society, endorsed as Franklin’s receipt, and the covering letter shows that Bowdoin had asked for it. Franklin was passing on a recipe, and no record credits him with inventing it. His batch was huge: six quarts of brandy, forty-four lemons and three quarts of milk, sweetened with “double refined” sugar, the whitest loaf sugar of the day. How Milk Made Franklin’s Punch Clear tracks its English cousins, and the same milk trick clears an alcohol-free drink, Rundell’s Milk-Clarified Lemonade of 1807.
Read more about this recipe
What the milk does
Poured in boiling, the milk splits as soon as it meets the lemon juice. The curds collect in the jelly bag and strain the rest, and the bag gives back a punch you can see through. Franklin left no word on how his tasted. The English milk punches of 1847, cleared the same way, get a single verdict: the milk tames the lemon.
Our version
This is one-twelfth of Franklin’s quantities. Made with a 40% brandy, it works out at about 15% alcohol by volume, so small glasses suit it. The brandy of the 1760s may have been stronger; its strength is not recorded. Franklin gives no keeping time. Oxford Night Caps says its milk punch keeps “ten days or a fortnight” in a cool cellar, so ours goes in the fridge and is drunk within two weeks, which is our choice. It is a different drink from the opaque, shaken milk punch of 1862.
Take 6 quarts of Brandy, and the Rinds of 44 Lemons pared very thin; Steep the Rinds in the Brandy 24 Hours; then strain it off. ... Let it stand two Hours; then run it thro’ a Jelly-bag till it is clear; then bottle it off.
Recipe makes: About 1.1 liters (our estimate), 8 small glasses
Ingredients
For About 1.1 liters (our estimate), 8 small glasses. Quantities are shown as written.
Quantities as written here, for About 1.1 liters (our estimate), 8 small glasses.
- Lemons, unwaxed if possible4
- Brandy, such as Cognac475 ml
- Water315 ml
- Nutmeg, freshly grated1/3Author measures: about 1 metric tsp (5 ml per tsp).
- Fresh lemon juice, squeezed from the pared lemons160 ml
- White sugar76 g
- Whole milk240 ml
Measurement notes
Ingredients as written here
- 4 lemons, unwaxed if possible
- 475 ml brandy, such as Cognac
- 315 ml water
- 1/3 whole nutmeg, freshly grated (about 1 tsp)
- 160 ml fresh lemon juice, squeezed from the pared lemons
- 76 g white sugar
- 240 ml whole milk
Equipment
Glass jar with a lid, about 1 liter
Vegetable peeler
Nutmeg grater
Small saucepan
Large heatproof bowl
Jelly bag, or a sieve lined with two paper coffee filters
Clean, dry glass bottles with stoppers
Instructions
Wash the lemons and pare the zest thinly from them with a vegetable peeler, leaving the white pith behind. Put the zest in a glass jar with the brandy, close the lid and leave for 24 hours.
Strain the brandy into a large heatproof bowl and discard the zest.
Stir in the water, the freshly grated nutmeg, the fresh lemon juice and the white sugar, and keep stirring until the sugar has dissolved.
Bring the whole milk just to the boil in a small saucepan, then pour it straight into the punch, stirring gently. It will curdle at once.
Leave the bowl to stand for 2 hours at cool room temperature.
Set the jelly bag (or a sieve lined with paper coffee filters) over a clean bowl and pour in the punch. Pour the first cloudy runnings back into the bag, and repeat until it runs clear.
Let it drip without squeezing the bag for about 3 hours, in the fridge if you can, otherwise somewhere cool.
Pour the clear punch into clean, dry bottles, close them and keep them in the fridge. Serve chilled, in small glasses.
Nutrition
160calories per serving
- Recipe makes
- About 1.1 liters (our estimate), 8 small glasses
- Servings
- 8
Estimated from USDA FoodData Central values for 80-proof distilled spirits, granulated sugar, raw lemon juice and acid whey, the part of the milk left after the curds are strained out, for one glass of about 135 ml.
Recipe notes
When adjusting quantities
This is one-twelfth of Franklin’s receipt. Keep the brandy, water, lemon juice and milk in step when you scale.
Notes
Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the batch.
Franklin’s quarts are the old wine quart of about 946 ml, the same as a US quart, and his pound is 454 g. Divided by twelve, his 6 quarts of brandy become 475 ml, his 4 quarts of water 315 ml, his 2 quarts of lemon juice 160 ml, his 3 quarts of milk 240 ml, his 2 pounds of sugar 76 g and his 4 large nutmegs one-third of a nutmeg. His 44 lemons become 4: zest all 4 for the brandy, then squeeze the same 4 for the juice, with a fifth if they are small. About 45 ml of juice to a lemon means 44 lemons give roughly the 2 quarts of juice he asks for, so the same fruit can give both the rinds and the juice; that reading is ours.
Ordinary white sugar stands in for his “double refined” loaf sugar.
The yield of about 1.1 liters and the drip time of about 3 hours are our estimates from the arithmetic above.
The punch is not dairy-free: some of the milk’s protein and most of its sugar stay in the whey. Keep it cold and pour out any bottle that smells sour or turns cloudy.
Storage
Keep the bottled punch in the fridge and drink it within 2 weeks. It contains whey from the milk.
Scaling changes the ingredients only; glassware, ice and timings need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.
Sources and attribution
Benjamin Franklin, “To make Milk Punch,” receipt sent to James Bowdoin with a letter of October 11, 1763, manuscript at the Massachusetts Historical Society (Collections Online, item 263)
Recipe details
- Drink family
- Punches & Cups
- Region
- American
- Era
- 18th century
- Difficulty
- Intermediate