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Drink

Kisel

A thickened drink made from wheat flour, bran, yeast, water, milk, cream, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Kisel

Ingredients

Directions

Ferment the starch

  1. Mix the wheat flour, wheat bran, yeast, and water in a bowl.

  2. Let the mixture stand in a warm place for two weeks.

  3. After two weeks, skim off the liquid from the surface.

Make the kisel

  1. Wash the starch with cold water.

  2. Boil the starch while still moist with a little cow's milk.

  3. Pour the mixture into molds to solidify.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream, or wine and sugar.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Wheat flour
Provides the starch that thickens and sets into a firm, jelly-like body when heated.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture over time, souring it and loosening the starch for later cooking.
Cow's milk
Adds moisture and softness to the starch as it is boiled.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel when served.
Wine
Adds acidity and a fruity aroma to the served drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sour fermented flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the starch while still moist. Heating moist starch in liquid causes its granules to swell and gelatinize, which is what lets the mixture thicken and later set. If the starch is too dry or heated unevenly, it may stay grainy or fail to set properly.

“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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