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Drink

Ale Posset

A warm drink made by boiling bread in milk, then adding ale, nutmeg, and sugar.

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

Make the posset

  1. Boil the crumb of bread in the milk.

  2. Warm the ale and add nutmeg and sugar.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the ale.

  4. Let it stand for a minute to clear.

Serve

  1. Drink it warm before going to bed.

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. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Provides the main liquid and body, and its proteins set into a soft, creamy curd when heated and curdled by the ale.
Strong ale
Adds acidity that curdles the hot milk, giving the posset its characteristic separated texture and bitter flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the ale.
Crumb of bread
Soaks up liquid and helps the curds gather and hold together as the milk is boiled.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the ale. Pouring the hot milk into the warm ale causes the milk proteins to curdle and separate into curds and whey. Letting it stand for a minute allows the curds to settle so the drink clears.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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