Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Egg and Milk
Ingredients
Directions
Make the drink
Break the egg into a saucer and beat it with a fork until thick like batter.
Sweeten the milk with sugar and stir in the beaten egg.
Serve with a piece of sponge cake or a slice of toast.
Variation
For a variation, beat the yolk and white separately.
Beat the yolk until light and thick, then mix it into the sweetened milk.
Beat the egg white until stiff, gradually adding sugar, then pile it on top of the milk mixture and serve.
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.
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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 egg thickens the milk slightly and gives it a rich, creamy body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base and provides most of the drink's body and mild flavour.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the milk and, in the variation, helps stabilise the whipped egg white.
The step that matters
Beat the egg white until stiff, gradually adding sugar. Egg white whips into a stable foam only when beaten to stiff peaks, and adding sugar slowly helps keep the foam from collapsing. Underbeaten white will sink into the milk.
“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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