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Dessert

Sack Possets

A dessert made by boiling cream with sugar and spices, then combining with boiled sack and ale, and setting in a pewter dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sack Possets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream and wine

  1. Boil the cream with sugar, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. In a separate pot, boil the sack and ale together with sugar.

Combine and set

  1. Combine the boiled cream and sack mixture.

  2. Heat a pewter dish and cover the bowl with it.

  3. Let it stand by the fire for 2-3 hours before serving.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the rich body of the posset as it thickens and sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the wine.
Sack
Its acidity helps the hot cream thicken into a set custard.
Ale
Adds liquid and malty flavor alongside the wine.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm aromatic flavor to the cream.
Mace
Contributes a delicate warm aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Combining the boiled cream and sack mixture. When the acidic wine and ale meet the hot cream, the milk proteins begin to coagulate and thicken it. This reaction is what turns the liquid into a posset, so the two mixtures need to be combined while both are hot.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, nutmeg, wine):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, nutmeg, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

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