Skip to main content
Drink

Koumiss

Fermented milk beverage made by dissolving sugar in skimmed milk, adding yeast, and allowing it to ferment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Koumiss

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the skimmed milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into quart-sized bottles.

  3. Add the yeast to each bottle.

  4. Cork and tie the bottles securely.

Ferment

  1. Place the bottles in a warm area until fermentation begins.

  2. Lay the bottles on their sides in a cool cellar.

  3. After three days, the koumiss should be ready to enjoy.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Skimmed milk
Provides the liquid base and the protein that ferments into the drink's body.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast, supplying the fermentable sugar that produces carbonation and mild sweetness.
Baker's yeast
Ferments the milk sugars, producing carbon dioxide and the drink's slight effervescence.

The step that matters

Corking and tying the bottles securely. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide inside the sealed bottles. A loose cork can let gas escape and leave the drink flat, while an overly tight seal under pressure risks bottles bursting.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes