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Dessert

Sack Posset

A creamy dessert made by simmering milk with crumbs, then adding an egg and wine mixture, and boiling briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Sack Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Crush the Boston cracker or soda biscuit into crumbs.

  2. Combine the crumbs with 1 pint of cold milk in a saucepan.

  3. Heat the mixture over medium heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the egg and wine

  1. In a bowl, beat together 1 egg, ⅓ cup of wine, 2 teaspoons of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of nutmeg.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the simmering milk, stirring constantly.

  3. Bring to a boil once, then remove from heat immediately.

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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Biscuit + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Egg
Thickens the posset as it heats, giving it a soft, set body.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour, and its tang balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg thickens into a creamy custard.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the milk. Egg proteins set at around 160°F, so pouring it in while stirring constantly and bringing the mixture to only one boil keeps the egg from scrambling into lumps.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, milk, egg, wine, 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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