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Buttermilk a Food Drink

A frozen beverage made from buttermilk, sugar, eggs, orange juice, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Buttermilk a Food Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the buttermilk.

  2. Add the eggs, with yolks and whites beaten separately.

  3. Stir and strain the mixture.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Add the orange and lemon juices.

  2. Freeze in the usual way, packing in ice and salt for an hour before serving.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Buttermilk
Provides the tangy liquid base that the drink is built on.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the drink softer when frozen.
Eggs
Add richness and body, with separately beaten whites giving a lighter texture.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and aroma to the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Freeze in the usual way, packing in ice and salt for an hour before serving. Salt lowers the temperature of the ice bath, so the mixture freezes evenly. Sugar also lowers the freezing point, so the drink stays soft enough to scoop and serve.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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