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Drink

Koumiss

Fermented mare's milk beverage made by adding yeast, sugar, and water to fresh sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 yeast and sugar in lukewarm water.

  2. Pour the mixture into a quart bottle.

  3. Add enough fresh sweet milk to nearly fill the bottle.

Ferment and store

  1. Shake well and place in a room at 70°F to 80°F for about six hours.

  2. Cork tightly and secure the cork.

  3. Store in a cool place (not above 60°F) for one week before use.

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

Yeast
Ferments the sugar in the milk, producing carbonation and the drink's slight effervescence.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast, providing the sugar that fermentation converts into gas and alcohol.
Fresh sweet milk
Serves as the base liquid and the sugar source that the fermentation works on.

The step that matters

Cork tightly and secure the cork.. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, which builds pressure in a sealed bottle. A loose cork can let gas escape and flatten the drink, while a poorly secured cork can pop out under pressure.

“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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