Vintage Milk Lemonade recipe

I made this for the first time to have at my Vintage Picnic Party and it was a big hit. I got the recipe from my beau's brother's wife - she'd been at a party where it was served and she raved about it and convinced me I simply MUST try it.

Turns out the recipe comes from famous food writer Jane Grigson, and is in her book 'Good Things'. I'm not sure where/when it may originally date from, but it definitely has that oldy-worldy feel to it.

Jane herself describes it as:

"...belonging to the Tennysonian nineteenth century we prefer, not to the north of England and its whitened doorsteps. Its light, interesting flavor was popular on vicarage lawns, under the cedars on hot days of middle-class leisure. In our more strenuous lives, it makes an excellent long drink — very refreshing."

I have to say that I found the original recipe sickeningly sweet and not altogether lemony, so I changed the proportions to increase the lemon juice and decrease the sugar content to make it appropriately sweet yet tangy and lemony. If for some reason you find it's not sweet enough for you, you can always add more sugar at the end.

MILK LEMONADE

INGREDIENTS

6 lemons

2 cups dry white wine

250g caster sugar

6 cups whole milk (e.g. full-fat milk, or milk with as much cream in as you can find)

METHOD
Peel the lemons thinly and put the peel in a large bowl. Pour 1/2 cup boiling water over the peel and leave overnight.

Naked lemons, their rind left to steep

Next day, add the juice of three of the lemons, plus the wine and sugar.

In a large saucepan, bring the milk to just reach boiling point and quickly pour into the other ingredients (the milk will separate when you do this).

Yes, it looks like vomit. You'll have to trust me that it will all turn out spectacularly!

Leave to cool. The milk has now turned to nursery-rhyme authentic 'curds and whey' (I know, right? Next I'll be sitting on a tuffet!) Strain the lemonade through a cheesecloth or muslin two or three times to remove all the peel and curds.

Post-straining - it's looking a lot more appetizing now!

************** SIDE NOTE ****************

You can dispose of the curds, or, if you're keen, you can make a sweet lemon paneer. To do this, pick out as much lemon peel as you can then squeeze the curds in the muslin/cheesecloth to get as much water out as possible.

making sweet lemon paneer from the leftover curds

Flatten into a fat slab, wrap in muslin and press overnight (I did this by placing it on the countertop, putting a chopping board on top and piling cookbooks on top of that). Refrigerate after pressing. You can probably do all kinds of inventive things with the sweet paneer, but I chopped it into small cubes, fried it in oil until all sides were brown and added it to a salad - it was like sweet lemony croutons.

**********************

Taste the lemonade and add juice from another 1-3 lemons if desired. I added juice from 3 more lemons and also added the lemon pulp as I felt a bit of pulp makes it more 'old fashioned' looking.

I decanted my lemonade into a number of rubber-stoppered glass bottles and kept it in the fridge. The recipe makes around 2 litres.

Serve chilled. You can drink it neat in a small cup, over ice, or diluted with a bit of soda water/sparkling mineral water for fizz.

NOTES

The original recipe uses 500g sugar and only 3 lemons, which I found tasted like syrupy sugar water rather than lemonade. But feel free to experiment and find the proportions that you like best!