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Drink

Invalid Food and Raw Egg

A drink made by beating a fresh egg and adding prepared food, optional brandy, sugar, or other flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Egg and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,340 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Invalid Food and Raw Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the fresh egg until frothy.

  2. Gradually add the prepared food while stirring continuously.

  3. Add brandy, sugar, or other flavoring if desired.

  4. Ensure the food is not hotter than can be sipped comfortably when adding the egg.

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. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Beaten into a foam that gives the drink a light, frothy body.

The step that matters

Check the temperature before adding the egg. Egg proteins set when heated, so a food that is too hot will cook the egg into lumps instead of blending it smoothly into the drink.

“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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