Clabbered milk substitutes

Store-bought buttermilk, which is pasteurised milk deliberately soured with lactic cultures, and the direct modern descendant of clabber in these recipes.

Best for

biscuits, cornbread and hoecakes, pancakes and griddle cakes, pound cake and layer cakes, fried chicken marinade

For any old recipe that says clabber or clabbered milk, this is what the recipe would say if it were written today. Same tang, same acidity, same behaviour with soda, and it hydrates a biscuit dough the same way. The only difference is that clabber is a set curd you scoop while buttermilk pours, so if a recipe asks you to spoon in thick clabber you should let the buttermilk stand and use it as measured rather than worrying about thickness. Give the carton a hard shake first.

Unsweetened set yogurt loosened with milk, which mimics clabber's soft-curd texture more closely than buttermilk does.

Best for

biscuits and cakes, cornbread, recipes that call for spooning in thick clabber, eating with sugar and fruit as clabber was eaten

The best pick when the recipe treats clabber as a thick ingredient. Yogurt is a set curd like clabber, so it looks right in the bowl, and whisking in milk brings it to the consistency of a soft clabber that has been stirred. It is slightly cleaner and more assertively sour than clabber, which tends toward a mellow, buttery, faintly cheesy sourness. Whisk it smooth first or you will get pale lumps in the crumb.

Fermented milk drink made with mixed bacteria and yeasts, thin, sour and faintly effervescent.

Best for

biscuits and quick breads, pancakes, marinades, any batter leavened with baking soda

Closest of the widely sold options on flavour complexity, because clabber was also fermented by a wild mixed community rather than two chosen strains, so kefir has the same layered, slightly funky depth. It is thinner than clabber and has a bready, yeasty aroma clabber lacks, but in a baked good that reads as extra character rather than a fault. Works interchangeably with buttermilk in every biscuit recipe.

Cultured cream let down with milk to approximate a rich clabber made from unhomogenised whole milk.

Best for

biscuits, pound cake, cobbler batter, rich cornbread

Genuinely good here, because clabber was made from raw whole milk with the cream still in it and was therefore richer than modern low-fat buttermilk. Baked goods come out more tender and slightly denser, with a plusher crumb and a mellower tang. The tradeoff is more fat overall, so a very buttery recipe can tip greasy; drop the butter by a tablespoon if it does.

The pantry fix that supplies acidity and liquid but no fermentation.

Best for

pancakes and waffles, cornbread, quick breads and muffins, any recipe using baking soda

Reliable and instant, and it will make your cornbread rise exactly right, because acid plus baking soda is the whole mechanism. What it cannot do is taste cultured: the sourness is bright and one-dimensional rather than round and dairy-deep, so a biscuit made with it is a little plainer on the finish. It also stays thin and looks curdled, which is normal and harmless.

The closest true remake, using a deliberate culture instead of hoping wild bacteria arrive.

Best for

recreating heritage recipes faithfully, eating as clabber with sugar, nutmeg or fruit, biscuits and cornbread where the flavour is the point

This gets you a soft set curd with mellow lactic sourness that behaves like clabber in every way that matters, and it is what you should do rather than leaving milk on the counter. Use pasteurised milk, clean jars, and a live-culture buttermilk or a mesophilic starter. Refrigerate as soon as it sets, use it within a few days, and discard it if it smells bitter, yeasty in a solvent-like way, or genuinely rotten, or if there is any mould.