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Drink

Egg-nog

A chilled alcoholic beverage made with egg yolks, sugar, brandy, rum, maraschino, nutmeg, heavy cream, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Egg-nog

Why it works: Rum and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 146 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Egg-nog

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolks of 12 eggs with 1¾ cups of sugar until very light.

  2. Gradually pour in ½ pint of French brandy, ⅓ pint of Jamaica rum, 2 sherry glasses of maraschino, and a little nutmeg.

  3. Add 2 quarts of whipped heavy cream, whipped very stiff.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little powdered sugar until very light.

  2. Stir half of the beaten egg whites into the egg-nog mixture.

  3. Heap the remaining egg whites on top of the bowl and sprinkle with nutmeg.

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. Rum + sherrytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Beaten with sugar, they thicken and enrich the base and give it a custardy body.
Heavy cream
Whipped stiff, it adds richness and a light, airy texture to the mixture.
Egg whites
Beaten until light, they add lightness and a foamy topping that keeps the drink airy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps the yolks whip into a light, stable foam.
French brandy
Adds spirit flavour and aroma to the base.

The step that matters

Beat the yolks with sugar until very light. Beating dissolves the sugar into the yolks and traps air, producing a thick, pale base. Under-beaten yolks stay dense and can make the final mixture heavy and flat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, brandy, rum, sherry, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, brandy, rum, sherry, cream. 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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