Milk Punch

"As served on rolling days at sea and a rainy day in Colon, Panama." Somebody here at Esquire hung that tag on the Milk Punch in our 1949 Handbook for Hosts. We've got no earthly idea what he was on about. But the guys who used to drink for us, they were always, well, um...okay, they were writers. The kind who churned out things like plays, short stories, novels, memoirs. You tell these guys to do something simple and you get, well, writing. Frank Shay, Lawton Mackall, Frederic Birmingham -- men who wouldn't bat an eyelash at deploying a word like "interjubilation" or suggesting that you shake a drink "as though seven demons were goading you to it" (not the much-dreaded personal kind, we hope). Which is to say -- Colon, Panama? We'd be drinking something involving the commingling of rum, lime juice, and ice, rain or no. But if those rileys felt like Milk Punch, we're sure they knew what they were doing.

Milk Punch is one of the more ancient medications in the pharmacopoeia. They drank it in colonial times, they drank it in Boston, they drank it on the Mississippi riverboats, they drank it just about everywhere, right on through the Second World War. After that, America seems to have lost the taste. One of our younger correspondents can still recall his naive revulsion upon witnessing Barnaby Jones order a Scotch and Milk (an elemental milk punch also favored by Walt "Pogo" Kelly and Dizzy "Dizzy" Gillespie). We've since brought him to know his error, although like us he still prefers his punch with rum or brandy, or both. (This latter iteration, one of the most voluptuous and comforting of all drinks, has been known to travel under the distasteful moniker of "Bull's Milk.") And no, you can't use skim milk or soy milk.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces dark rum
• 1 teaspoon superfine sugar
• 6 to 8 ounces milk

Glass Type: Collins glass

Instructions

Stir well with cracked ice in a chilled cocktail shaker, then strain into large goblet or Collins glass. Sprinkle with nutmeg, if you like nutmeg. You don't have to make this with rum, of course: Any of the dark liquors (whiskey, brandy) will work just fine (just don't try it with tequila -- or do; what's it to us?). For Bull's Milk, use 1 1/2 ounces brandy flavored with 1/2 ounce dark rum and try not to think about stock breeding.