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Mulled Buttermilk

A hot drink of buttermilk heated and thickened with egg and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mulled Buttermilk

Ingredients

Directions

Heat and combine

  1. Heat the buttermilk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolk to the boiling buttermilk.

  4. Let it boil briefly.

  5. Serve.

Thicken

  1. Alternatively, mix cold buttermilk with flour to create a thickening.

  2. Stir the thickening into the boiling buttermilk.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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, acidic liquid base and most of the body of the drink.
Egg
Yolk proteins set when heated, thickening and enriching the liquid.
Flour
Starch swells in hot liquid, thickening the buttermilk.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg yolk to the boiling buttermilk. Egg yolk proteins set quickly in very hot liquid and can scramble or clump if they meet the heat unevenly. Mixing the yolk well before it goes in helps it blend smoothly.

“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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