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Dessert

Butter-milk Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, buttermilk, roll, lemon zest, nutmeg, cream, clarified butter, eggs, and sugar.

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.

Prepare 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, rich cream, clarified butter, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Sweeten the mixture to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes, with or without puff pastry.

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

Buttermilk
Its acidity curdles the milk, forming the curd that gives the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help set the pudding as they cook.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped air-like foam that lightens the texture and aids rise while baking.
Rich cream
Adds fat and moisture, producing a softer, richer texture.
Clarified butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Roll
Its starch and crumb absorb liquid and help give the pudding structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites trap air in their foam, which lightens the pudding as it bakes. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser, flatter result.

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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