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 the mixture
Heat the milk and sugar over low heat until the sugar dissolves and the milk is lukewarm.
Dissolve the yeast in a cup with 2 tablespoons of the warm milk.
Stir the dissolved yeast into the milk mixture.
Ferment and store
Pour the mixture into bottles, leaving some space at the top, and leave uncorked for 24 hours to ferment.
After fermentation, cork the bottles tightly and secure the corks with strong twine.
Store the bottles on their side in a cool place for 8 days before use.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Rich sweet milk
- Provides the liquid base and lactose that the yeast ferments into a lightly alcoholic, effervescent drink.
- White granulated sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished drink.
- Compressed yeast
- Ferments the milk sugars, producing carbon dioxide for fizz and small amounts of alcohol.
The step that matters
Leaving the bottles uncorked for fermentation. Fermenting yeast releases carbon dioxide, so leaving the bottles uncorked lets gas escape and prevents them from bursting. Corking only after fermentation traps the gas that builds carbonation during storage.
“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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