Skip to main content
Dessert

Treacle Posset

A warm milk-based dessert thickened with treacle and flavored with ginger.

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

Why it works: Molasses and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,116 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Treacle Posset

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until hot but not boiling.

  2. Stir in the treacle and ground ginger until well combined.

  3. Pour into a mug and enjoy warm before bed.

  4. Store any leftovers in a covered jug for later.

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. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the drink.
Treacle
Adds sweetness, deep flavour and a dark colour to the milk.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the milk gently. Milk can scorch on the base of the pan or boil over if heated too fast. Heating gently until hot, without boiling, keeps the milk smooth and stops a skin forming on its surface.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipes