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Drink

Mock Asses’ Milk

A warm drink made from snails, barley, eryngo-root, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and milk work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Mock Asses’ Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak snails in salt and water for 2 days, then clean and wash them.

Make the jelly

  1. Boil snails, barley, and eryngo-root together until it becomes a jelly.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve ½ pint warm for adults and ⅓ pint for children, adding a little milk and sugar after warming.

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. Barley + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Snail + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Barley + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Snail + barleytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Barley
Its starch swells and thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the jelly its body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and a mild, soft flavour to the finished warm drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, adjusted to taste after warming.

The step that matters

Boiling until it becomes a jelly. Barley starch thickens as it cooks and gels as the liquid cools. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can break down the starch and make the texture gluey.

“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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