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Dessert

Butter-milk Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, buttermilk, grated roll, lemon zest, nutmeg, cream, clarified butter, egg yolks, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Butter-milk Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. Combine 2 quarts of new milk with 1 quart of buttermilk.

  2. Drain off the whey and mix the curd with the grated roll, lemon zest, grated nutmeg, cream, clarified butter, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake or boil

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes, with or without puff pastry.

  2. Alternatively, you can boil the mixture.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the bulk of the custard and, with buttermilk, supplies the curd that gives body.
Buttermilk
Its acidity curdles the milk into a soft curd, giving the pudding its tangy base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, smooth texture when heated.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped to lighten the mixture and add loft as it bakes.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing a smooth, moist texture.
Grated roll
Soaks up liquid and adds body, giving the pudding structure as it sets.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten and handled gently; overmixing deflates them, so the pudding loses lightness and rise in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, buttermilk, nutmeg, cream, 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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