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Dessert

Buttermilk Pudding

A baked custard made with milk, buttermilk, rennet, bread crumbs, lemon peel, butter, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Buttermilk Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the curd

  1. Mix the new milk and buttermilk in a bowl.

  2. Add rennet to curdle the mixture.

  3. Drain off the whey.

Assemble and bake

  1. Combine the curd with bread crumbs, grated lemon peel, butter, and beaten eggs.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with sugar to your liking.

  3. Line pie plates with pastry.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pie plates.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the base curd with buttermilk when curdled by rennet.
Buttermilk
Adds tang and acidity, helping the milk curdle into a soft curd.
Eggs
Bind the curd and set during baking to give the filling structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Baking at 400°F sets the egg and curd proteins into a firm custard. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, buttermilk, bread, butter, egg, 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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