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Drink

Ale Flip

A frothy ale-based drink made by mixing ale, sugar, mace, clove, butter, egg whites and yolks, then frothing by pouring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Ale Flip

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 3 pints of ale, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 blade of mace, 1 clove, and 1 small piece of butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Beat the egg white and yolks together, mixing in 1 tablespoon of cold ale.

  3. Combine the ale mixture with the egg mixture and pour rapidly between two large jugs from a height for several minutes to froth it; do not let it cool.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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 yolks
Add richness and help thicken the drink as they set gently with the warm ale.
Egg white
Traps air when poured, creating a light, frothy foam on top.
Ale
Forms the liquid base of the drink and carries the flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the ale.

The step that matters

Pouring the ale and egg mixture between jugs. Pouring rapidly from a height aerates the mixture to create froth. If it cools, the eggs will not foam properly and the drink loses its texture, so keep it warm while pouring.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, butter, egg. 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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