Midnight Milk

Milk punch is a trick that looks like alchemy and is really just chemistry with patience. You curdle a fruit punch with hot milk, let the curds catch every particle that makes the drink cloudy, and strain the whole thing slowly through the curd bed. What drips out the bottom is transparent, silky, and tastes far more of pineapple than the pineapple did.

Build, for twenty: a bottle of blended rum, two litres of pressed pineapple, the juice of ten limes, a litre of whole milk brought just to a simmer. Combine, wait an hour, then strain — twice through the curds, once through a paper filter, and do not rush the last one.

We start straining at four in the afternoon and it is ready around ten, which is why it is called what it is called. It keeps for a week, though it has never once had to.