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Drink

Koumiss

Koumiss is a fermented milk beverage made by mixing milk, buttermilk, and sugar, then allowing it to thicken and ferment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Koumiss

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, combine 1 quart of new milk with ½ cup of fresh buttermilk and 3 or 4 lumps of white sugar.

  2. Mix well until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Place the mixture in a warm spot for 10 hours until it thickens.

Bottle and ferment

  1. Pour the mixture from one vessel to another until smooth and uniform.

  2. Bottle the koumiss and keep it in a warm place for 24 to 36 hours.

  3. Ensure the bottles are tightly corked and the corks are tied down.

  4. Shake well for 5 minutes before opening.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttermilktop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

New milk
Provides the liquid and proteins that thicken and sour as the culture works.
Fresh buttermilk
Supplies the live cultures that ferment the milk sugars and sour it.
White sugar
Feeds the cultures, adding fermentable sugar that produces carbonation and sweetness.

The step that matters

Bottling and tying down the corks. Fermentation gives off carbon dioxide while the mixture sits warm. Tightly corked and tied bottles hold that gas, which is what makes the drink fizzy. Loose corks let it escape and can also leave the drink flat.

“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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