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Drink

Ale Posset

A warm drink made by boiling milk with toasted bread, then mixing with mild ale, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Ale Posset

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk with the slice of toasted bread.

  2. In a punch bowl, pour in the mild ale and sweeten it.

  3. Add spices to the ale.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the ale mixture.

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 + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Milk
Heating and curdling the milk with ale creates the soft, set texture of the posset.
Mild ale
Its acidity curdles the hot milk and adds a malty, bitter flavour.
Toasted bread
Toasting and simmering it in the milk adds a gentle toasted flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk over the ale. The milk must be hot enough to curdle when it meets the acidic ale. Pouring it in steadily, rather than all at once, helps it combine evenly and form a smooth, set posset.

“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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