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Drink

To Make Ale Posset

A warm, sweetened milk drink flavored with ale, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Make Ale Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Make the posset

  1. Mix the milk, grated bread, beaten egg yolk, and butter in a pot.

  2. Stir the mixture until it boils, then let it simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the hot ale, sugar, and nutmeg, and boil everything together.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Forms the liquid base that thickens and gives the posset its creamy body.
Penny loaf
Bread thickens the liquid as it softens and absorbs milk, giving body to the posset.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mixture and helps it set into a custard-like texture when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Ale
Adds a malty, slightly bitter flavour and acidity that cuts the richness.

The step that matters

Stir in the hot ale and boil everything together. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the mixture boils too hard or too long it can curdle and turn grainy. Stirring constantly while it heats keeps the texture smooth and even.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar. 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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