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Dessert

Beulah Egg

A light, frothy egg white mixture flavored with lemon, nuts, rice, and fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,366 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

Beulah Egg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Slowly add the lemon juice while continuing to beat for a few minutes.

  3. Combine the mixture with nuts, rice, and fruits.

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. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

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

  2. Nuts + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Lemon + nutstop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutstop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,624 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the dish its light, airy structure.
Lemon juice
Acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice while beating. Lemon juice is added slowly while beating so the acid is distributed evenly and the foam stays stable. Adding it all at once can deflate the foam and reduce its volume.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Milletfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, rice. 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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