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Egg Flip

A warm alcoholic beverage made by mixing ale, eggs, sugar, rum or brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Egg Flip

Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Egg Flip

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the ale in a pot until hot but not boiling.

  2. In a separate jug, beat the eggs with the sugar and rum or brandy, adding nutmeg, ginger, and lemon peel.

  3. Pour the hot ale into the jug with the egg mixture.

  4. Quickly pour the mixture back and forth between the two jugs until smooth and well combined.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Rum + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the drink and give it a creamy, frothy body when beaten.
Ale
Forms the liquid base and carries the warmth and flavour of the drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the ale and spirit.
Rum or brandy
Adds alcohol warmth and aroma to the drink.

The step that matters

Pour the hot ale into the egg mixture gradually and pour back and forth quickly. If hot ale hits the eggs too fast or the mixture sits still, the eggs can scramble into curds. Moving the mixture between jugs quickly keeps it smooth and evenly heated.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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