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Mulled Buttermilk

A warm buttermilk drink thickened with flour and egg.

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

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

  2. Beat the egg in a bowl and add it to the boiling buttermilk.

  3. Let it boil briefly and serve.

  4. Alternatively, mix cold buttermilk with flour to thicken, then stir 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
Forms the liquid base and gives the drink its tangy flavour.
Egg
Thickens the boiling liquid as its proteins set, giving body to the drink.
Flour
Thickens the buttermilk by swelling with liquid and adds body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the boiling buttermilk. Egg proteins set when heated, so pouring beaten egg into boiling liquid can scramble it into lumps. Adding it steadily while stirring, or tempering it first, keeps the drink 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.

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