Skip to main content
Dessert

Buttermilk Filling

A sweet, lemon-flavored filling made with buttermilk, sugar, egg yolks, and corn flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Buttermilk Filling

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.

Prepare

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

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, sugar, egg yolks, and corn flour.

  2. Add lemon zest or juice to taste and mix well.

  3. Pour the filling into a prepared crust.

Bake

  1. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds tanginess and moisture, giving the filling a soft, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the filling as they cook, giving it structure and richness.
Corn flour
Thickens the liquid so the filling holds its shape when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tang of the buttermilk.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Egg yolks and corn flour thicken as they heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it curdle or turn rubbery and dry.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes