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English Home-made Koumiss

A fermented milk beverage made from buttermilk, fresh milk, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

English Home-made Koumiss

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix buttermilk, fresh milk, and powdered sugar in a large bowl. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Cover the mixture with a cloth and place it near a warm fire for 12 hours.

  2. After fermentation, bottle the koumiss and tie the corks securely.

  3. Store the bottles lying down to manage the effervescence.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Buttermilk + milktop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Buttermilk
Supplies cultures and acidity to start the fermentation of the milk.
Fresh milk
Provides the base liquid and proteins that ferment into a thin, tangy drink.
Powdered sugar
Feeds the fermenting cultures, adding sweetness and producing carbonation as they work.

The step that matters

Bottling and storing the fermented koumiss. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. Securely tied corks and storing bottles lying down help contain the pressure and keep the corks moist, reducing the risk of bursting or leaking.

“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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