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Drink

Yale Flip

A chilled beverage made with syrup, egg, lemon juice, phosphate, sugar, shaved ice, and soda water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Yale Flip

Ingredients

Directions

Build the drink

  1. In a glass, combine the don't-care syrup, egg, lemon juice, phosphate, and sugar.

  2. Fill the glass with shaved ice.

Finish and serve

  1. Top with soda water and stir well with a spoon.

  2. Serve with straws.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg
Adds body and a smooth, creamy texture to the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharper flavors.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Top with soda water and stir well. Carbonated soda water loses its fizz quickly when stirred hard, so stir just enough to blend the layers evenly while keeping the drink lively.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, 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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