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

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 didn’t care much for the norms imposed on the women of her day. She was married just long enough to snatch her husband’s 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 didn’t 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 devoid of color but also dangerously easy to drink. Slightly sweet, full of spices, and velvety-smooth on the palate, the punch made an impression on Behn’s 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 York’s Eleven Madison Park in 2008. Since then, he’s gone on to become something of a clarified-milk cocktail evangelist, making versions with everything from goat’s milk to beet juice and, in 2018, launching his own line of bottled milk punch called Rockey’s 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.

Wondrich also notes in his book Imbibe that the milk punch had a serious reputation for potency, citing an 1873 article in the Brooklyn Eagle that called it “the surest thing in the world to get drunk on, and so fearfully drunk, that you won’t know whether you are a cow yourself, or some other foolish thing.” Nevertheless, 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 Whisson’s 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 Orleans–style brandy milk punch—a creamy, nog-adjacent cocktail that came along much later—the clarified cocktail is shelf-stable. “You can pop a cork in it, put it in your cellar, and age it like wine,” Rockey says. It’s 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 season’s fruits and whatnot, you would still have milk punch. Many [milk punches] actually get better in time.”

Even before Behn’s wild soirées, 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. “I’m near certain those are the precursors [to clarified milk punch],” Rockey says. “If you look at how possets and syllabubs are made, it’s the same. There’s acid, there’s sweetener, there’s spices, and there’s 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 Bartender’s Guide, an 1862 classic by Jerry Thomas (also sometimes called The Bon-Vivant’s 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 separates. 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 filter—a jelly strainer used for making preserves works great, as does a clean pillowcase or T-shirt—and enough faith to trust the process.

“Milk punch is always stressful,” Rockey says. “I’ve probably made more milk punch than anybody alive at this point and every time I see all these ingredients, I’m like, ‘There’s no way this shit’s going to work.’ You’re 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, it’s 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.

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