Make the Crystal-Clear Milk Cocktail Loved by a Spy and a Founding Father – Atlas Obscura

This week, Gastro Obscura is looking at wondrous wintertime cocktails. Yesterdays recipe was Moose Milk, the sweet, potent eggnog of the Canadian military.

In addition to being an accomplished poet, playwright, and royal spy for King Charles II, Aphra Behn threw a hell of a party. A cultural maverick in 17th-century England, Behn didnt care much for the norms imposed on the women of her day. She was married just long enough to snatch her husbands last name and relied on her blistering wit for financial independence, writing plays every bit as bawdy as her male counterparts. She also loved a good drink. When entertaining her fellow London literati, Behn didnt serve just any kind of punch. Rather, she opted for a concoction of brandy, lemon juice, and dairy that would be miraculously transformed into a glass-clear cocktail.

Clarified milk punch is the kind of scientific sleight of hand that feels far too contemporary to be centuries old. Despite what its ingredient list might imply, the end result is not only glass clear but dangerously easy to drink. Slightly sweet, full of spices, and velvety-smooth on the palate, the punch made an impression on Behns guests.

One of her contemporaries wrote about consuming this delicious milk punch made by Aphra Behn in the 1600s, says Eamon Rockey, who helped introduce a new generation to clarified milk punch while he was bartending at New Yorks Eleven Madison Park in 2008. Since then, hes gone on to become something of a clarified-milk cocktail evangelist, making versions with everything from goats milk to beet juice and, in 2018, launching his own line of bottled milk punch called Rockeys Botanical Liqueur.

Given that the earliest written record of the drink belongs to Behn, she may have come up with the idea, although it could also simply have been a popular drink of the times. According to David Wondrich, who writes about the history of the cocktail in his book Punch, the oldest surviving recipe belongs to another woman: Mary Rockett, a housewife who wrote down her clarified milk punch recipe in 1711. Benjamin Franklin, who enclosed a recipe in a 1763 letter, was a fan, as was Charles Dickens, who left a few bottles of the stuff in his cellar after his death. Queen Victoria liked Nathaniel Whissons version so much that in 1838 she made his company the official purveyors of milk punch to Her Majesty and President Grover Cleveland most likely served it to guests, if the 1887 edition of The White House Cookbook is any indication.

Unlike New Orleansstyle brandy milk puncha creamy, nog-adjacent cocktail that came along much laterthe clarified cocktail is shelf-stable. You can pop a cork in it, put it in your cellar, and age it like wine, Rockey says. Its a quality that would have made the punch especially appealing during the lean winter months prior to the invention of refrigeration. This ensured that you could drink it all year long. Until you get the next seasons fruits and whatnot, you would still have milk punch. Many [milk punches] actually get better in time.

Even before Behns wild soires, the English were already sipping curdled-milk cocktails called syllabubs and possets. The latter would have been poured from a special tea kettle or ornate porcelain glass with a straw, so that the drinker could sip the boozy whey below, then spoon up the curds as a dessert. Both drinks were popular enough among wealthy Brits to make cameos in works by Jane Austen and William Shakespeare. Im near certain those are the precursors [to clarified milk punch], Rockey says. If you look at how possets and syllabubs are made, its the same. Theres acid, theres sweetener, theres spices, and theres milk.

Rockey first encountered clarified milk punch in the early aughts when Cameron Brogue, then head bartender at Bar Pleiades, stumbled across the recipe in The Bartenders Guide, an 1862 classic by Jerry Thomas (also sometimes called The Bon-Vivants Companion). On paper, the recipe had all the hallmarks of a terrible idea: a literal hot mess of curdled dairy, citric acid, pineapple juice, tea, and booze. When milk comes in contact with acid and alcohol, it curdles. The magic happens when the revolting-looking mixture passes through a filter. The curds settle to the bottom, forming a nest, and the milk proteins, called casein, strip the liquid of both its color and harsh tannins.

As a former chef, I looked at it from a technique perspective and thought there was something very special about this recipe that could be adapted and riffed on, Rockey says. Nowadays, variations ranging from milk-clarified mezcal Old Fashioneds to ube-tinted numbers with yuzu have become so widespread that some wonder if the trend has jumped the shark.

Yet for something that looks so unmistakably chef-y, clarified milk punch requires zero centrifuges or other molecular-gastro contraptions. All amateur mixologists need to make it at home is a loose-mesh filtera jelly strainer used for making preserves works great, as does a clean pillowcase or T-shirtand enough faith to trust the process.

Milk punch is always stressful, Rockey says. Ive probably made more milk punch than anybody alive at this point and every time I see all these ingredients, Im like, Theres no way this shits going to work. Youre looking at dark black tea and brown liquor. The milk is completely opaque. But if you do it right, it will come through perfectly clear.

If made using his and other modern-day bartenders suggestions, milk punch is a two-day, multi-step, many-dish affair. Why go to all the fuss? Because milk punch is undeniably festive, not to mention a visual show-stopper. Plus, as Behn knew, its ideal for entertaining. Make it a day, a week, or a month in advance, then pop it out of the fridge and leave your guests wondering just how you did it.

Adapted from How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Vivants Companion by Jerry Thomas

Serves 1216

Ingredients

6 lemons juiced, 2 zested2 cups granulated sugar1 pineapple, juiced (or 500 milliliters pineapple juice)6 cloves20 coriander seeds1 stick cinnamon2 cups cognac2 cups rum cup Arrack1 cup of strong, brewed green tea1 quart boiling water1 quart whole milk (preferably organic and not ultra-pasteurized)Freshly grated nutmeg for garnish (optional)Instructions

The finished cocktail. AARON JOEL SANTOS FOR ATLAS OBSCURA

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Make the Crystal-Clear Milk Cocktail Loved by a Spy and a Founding Father - Atlas Obscura