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Mulled Buttermilk

A warm, spiced buttermilk served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk 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

Make the thickening

  1. Make a thickening by mixing flour with cold buttermilk.

Heat and season

  1. Stir this mixture into a pint of boiling buttermilk.

  2. Stir constantly while heating on the stove.

  3. Add a little allspice and sweeten to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the mulled buttermilk over pieces of toast.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 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 + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Buttermilk + allspicetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the buttermilk as it heats, giving the drink a smooth, body-rich texture.
Buttermilk
Forms the base of the drink and provides its tangy, slightly acidic flavor.
Allspice
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the mulled drink.

The step that matters

Stir constantly while heating. Flour thickens buttermilk only when its starch is dispersed evenly and heated. Without constant stirring, the flour can clump and settle, leaving lumps and an uneven texture.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, buttermilk, sugar. 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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