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Drink

Koumiss

Koumiss is a fermented mare's milk beverage made with yeast and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and sugar 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. Fill each lager beer bottle with fresh milk to the bottom of the neck, leaving room for expansion.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of strained distillery yeast and 1 teaspoon of white sugar to each bottle.

Ferment

  1. Place the bottles at a temperature of 80°F (27°C) for 6 hours.

  2. Gently shake the bottles twice during this time, every 2 hours.

Chill and serve

  1. After 6 hours, place the bottles on ice for 3 days.

  2. Open carefully into a pitcher.

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. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Fresh milk
Supplies the liquid and lactose sugar that the yeast ferments.
Distillery yeast
Ferments sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol, giving the drink its fizz and tang.
White sugar
Gives the yeast extra sugar to ferment, adding sweetness and more carbonation.

The step that matters

Open carefully into a pitcher. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide that builds pressure inside the sealed bottles. Opening them slowly lets the gas release gradually, which prevents the liquid from foaming over or spraying out.

“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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