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Drink

Tom-and-jerry

A hot alcoholic beverage made with eggs, sugar, rum, and boiling water, garnished with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Tom-and-jerry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until frothy.

Mix and serve

  1. Add the rum and boiling water to the mixture and stir well.

  2. Pour the mixture back and forth between two hot pitchers.

  3. Serve in hot glasses and grate nutmeg over the top.

  4. Refill the glasses often.

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

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

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Eggs
Whipped with sugar, they add foam and a rich, creamy body to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps stabilise the beaten egg foam.
St. croix rum
Provides the spirit base and the main flavour of the drink.
Boiling water
Warms the mixture and loosens it, giving a hot, smooth drink.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture back and forth between two hot pitchers. Pouring between pitchers aerates and blends the hot mixture evenly, building a smooth, frothy texture. Keeping the pitchers hot prevents the drink from cooling too quickly before serving.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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