Skip to main content
Drink

Koumiss

A fermented milk beverage made by dissolving sugar in skimmed milk, adding yeast, and allowing it to ferment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and milk 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. Dissolve the sugar in the skimmed milk.

  2. Pour the mixture into quart-sized bottles.

  3. Add the yeast to each bottle.

  4. Cork and secure the bottles.

Ferment

  1. Place the bottles in a warm location until fermentation begins.

  2. Lay the bottles on their sides in a cool cellar.

  3. After three days, the koumiss should be ready.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Skimmed milk
Forms the liquid base that the yeast ferments.
Bakers' yeast
Ferments the sugar and milk sugar, producing gas and a light fizz.

The step that matters

Securing the bottles. Fermentation produces carbon dioxide, which builds pressure in sealed bottles. Corks must be secured firmly so they do not blow out, and the gas gives the finished drink its natural effervescence.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes