This is the last post in a short series on homemade Italian
liqueurs. Using Maria Pignatelli Ferrante’s Puglia
- A Culinary Memoir [2008] as a springboard, we began with a recipe for Rosolio di limone, a bright-tasting,
aromatic lemon liqueur. We next explored Nocino,
a dark, complex liqueur made with green walnuts picked on 24 June, the Feast Day
of St. John the Baptist. The last liqueur in this series is Liquore latte di vecchia or Old Lady’s
Milk Liqueur. This curious yet worthwhile cordial is made with fresh milk,
citrus, sugar and grain alcohol.
In the United States Liquore
latte di vecchia is as obscure as lemon liqueurs are popular. I found two recipes
in regional cookbooks from Italy (both recently published in the US by Oronzo
Editions): Ferrante’s Puglia and Giuseppe
Coria’s Sicily – Culinary Crossroads
[2008] translated by Gaetano Cipolla. The great Pellegrino Artusi (Mr. Wilde’s
neighbor on this site’s banner) has a recipe in The Science of Cookery and the Art of Eating Well [1891] that, in
all but its name, is nearly the same as Liquore
latte di vecchia. Artusi’s Rosolio
Tedesco (or German Rosolio)
contains a “garden lemon,” vanilla, grain alcohol, sugar and milk.
Although Ferrante’s, Coria’s and Artusi’s recipes are
similar, they are not identical (not unusual for regional recipes). Ferrante’s
and Artusi’s recipes call simply for milk, while Coria’s recipe calls for “goat
or other milk, freshly milked”. Ferrante calls for half a lemon, diced, while
Coria calls for the “zest of 1 orange or lemon, or vanilla.” Artusi’s recipe
calls for both citrus and vanilla.
Artusi writes: “Don’t be taken aback by the strange
composition of this rosolio, which is
easy to make, delicately flavored, and as clear as water.” Yes, making Liquore latte di vecchia is easy. The
only difficulty that you might encounter depends upon how fresh you want your
milk. If store-bought milk is fresh enough, then making Liquore latte di vecchia is a breeze. However, if you want to use freshly
milked cow or goat milk, then making Liquore
latte di vecchia might prove a bit more challenging. Through a helpful lead
from my editor, I located an organic dairy in California called Organic
Pastures that sells one-day-old raw milk at a local farmer’s market.
Here is Ferrante’s recipe for Liquore latte di vecchia:
½ lemon, diced
5 cups sugar
1 quart milk
1 quart alcohol [pure, distilled]
Drop the lemon pieces into a wide-necked bottle. Add the
sugar, the milk, and the alcohol. Seal hermetically and set aside to rest for
15 days, shaking the contents of the bottle every morning and evening. Filter
the liqueur, transfer to clean, dry bottles. Hermetically seal the bottles.
A few notes. After adding all of the ingredients expect two
things to happen: the lemon will begin to curdle the milk and the ingredients
will separate. Be brave. Shaking the concoction over the 15-day infusion period
helps dissolve the sugar and integrate the liquids, but do not be surprised if
the liquids occasionally separate. Just keep shaking the bottle twice a day and
all will be well.
After the 15-day infusion period I filtered the liqueur
first through cheesecloth and then through a paper coffee filter. This produced
a somewhat clear, slightly milky liquid. A second pass through a paper filter
produced a relatively clear liquid, albeit with a slight yellow hue (presumably
due to the lemon zest). Certainly compared to milk, this liqueur is, as Artusi
puts it, “clear as water.”
Liquore
latte di vecchia tastes like all of its ingredients; it is sweet and
slightly lemony with a round, creamy flavor. But make no mistake: it packs a
wallop (as would any drink using 151 proof alcohol).
