Skip to main content
Drink

Mulled Buttermilk

A warm beverage made by boiling buttermilk with flour, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Pour the buttermilk into an enameled saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, break the egg and beat until light and foamy.

  3. Add the sugar and flour to the egg, stirring until smooth.

  4. Pour the mixture into the boiling buttermilk, stirring rapidly to prevent scorching.

  5. Boil for a moment, then remove from heat and serve hot or iced as preferred.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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

Egg
Thickens the drink as it cooks and gives it a richer body.
Flour
Stabilizes the egg mixture and helps thicken the buttermilk so it does not separate.
Buttermilk
Provides the tangy, thin liquid base of the drink.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tang of the buttermilk.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling buttermilk. Adding the egg too quickly or without constant stirring can cause it to cook into lumps or scorch on the pan bottom. Rapid stirring spreads the heat and keeps the egg dispersed so the drink stays smooth.

“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