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Drink

Koumiss

Koumiss is a fermented milk drink made by boiling milk, adding sugar and yeast, and allowing it to ferment in bottles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the fresh milk and let it cool slightly.

  2. Pour the milk into quart bottles, leaving room to shake.

  3. Add the crushed sugar and yeast to the bottles.

  4. Cork the bottles with new corks and tie them down.

Ferment

  1. Keep the bottles cool and lay them horizontally.

  2. Shake the bottles twice daily.

  3. It will be ready to drink on the sixth day, or earlier in hot weather.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Fresh milk
Provides the liquid and lactose that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Lump sugar
Feeds the yeast, supplying the fermentable sugar that drives fizziness and alcohol.
Vienna yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give koumiss its sharpness and effervescence.

The step that matters

Shaking the bottles twice daily. Shaking mixes the yeast and sugar through the milk and releases built-up gas pressure, keeping fermentation even and reducing the risk of over-pressurised bottles bursting.

“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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