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Dessert

Buttermilk Pie

A custard pie made with buttermilk, sugar, butter, flour, eggs, nutmeg, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Buttermilk Pie

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Buttermilk Pie

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 filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the buttermilk, sugar, butter, flour, and eggs until smooth.

  3. Add nutmeg and lemon to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 moisture and a tangy acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the filling tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Eggs
Set with heat to give the filling its structure.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. The egg proteins coagulate as the pie heats and form the custard. Underbaked filling stays runny, while overbaked filling can curdle, weep, or crack.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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