Doing History in Public | Tomas B. N. Brown

I have occasionally written Doing History in Public, a graduate-run blog attached to the Cambridge History Faculty. I have contributed two posts.

Curdling milk for an eighteenth-century milk punch recipe — Curdling the Milk.

Straining an eighteenth-century milk punch recipe — Straining the punch.

‘To Make Milk Punch’ is a short exploration of English punches, working with an 1808 recipe from The Family Receipt-book which combines milk, brandy, sugar and lemon. The technique of curdling out the whey to produce a drinkable, silky and not-at-all-cheesy drink is one becoming more popular in modern cocktails, and has its roots in these drinks.

Advertising for the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, 2023 — Advertising for Black Atlantic, Fitzwilliam Museum.

‘Intervention and Reflection — Black Atlantic at the Fitzwilliam Museum’ reviewed the 2023 Fitzwilliam Museum exhibition of the same name, praising its sensitive yet radical approach to negotiating the inextricability of legacies of slavery within Cambridge collections. Since the piece, I have been very glad to see this work continued in the 2025 ‘Rise up’.