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Drink

Ale Posset

A warm drink made by heating milk with bread, then adding it to ale spiced with nutmeg and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,324 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Ale Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the milk

  1. Place a small piece of bread in a pot with 1 pint of milk.

  2. Heat the pot over the fire.

Combine and serve

  1. Add nutmeg and ginger to 1 pint of ale.

  2. Once the milk boils, pour it over the ale mixture.

  3. Let it stand for a few minutes to clear before serving.

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. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Provides the creamy base that thickens and softens as it curdles in the ale.
Ale
Its acidity curdles the hot milk, giving the posset its soft set and tangy flavour.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the drink.
Ginger
Adds spicy warmth and aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk into the ale. The milk should be boiling hot when it meets the acidic ale. Heat and acid together cause the milk proteins to curdle into a soft set, and standing lets the curds settle so the drink clears.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, nutmeg. 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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