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Drink

Mulled Buttermilk

A warm beverage made from buttermilk, egg, flour, and spices, thickened and sweetened, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Mulled Buttermilk

Ingredients

Directions

Make the buttermilk base

  1. Boil the buttermilk in a pot.

  2. Add the beaten egg to the boiling buttermilk.

  3. Make a thickening by mixing the flour with cold buttermilk, then stir it into the boiling mixture.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

Prepare the toast and finish

  1. Toast the bread pieces until brown.

  2. Pour boiling water over the toasted bread and add butter.

  3. Stir in the stimulant and sweeten to taste.

  4. Flavor with nutmeg or vanilla.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 liquid base that the egg and flour thicken.
Egg
Coagulates when heated, helping to thicken and give the drink body.
Flour
Thickens the boiling mixture through starch gelatinization when mixed with cold buttermilk first.
Toasted bread
Adds toasty, browned flavor and body as it soaks in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with cold buttermilk before adding it. Flour clumps when dropped into hot liquid. Blending it with cold buttermilk first keeps the starch dispersed, so it thickens smoothly when stirred into the boiling mixture.

“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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