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Dessert

Whipped Eggs

Dessert of ladyfingers soaked in sherry topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Whipped Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dip the ladyfingers in sherry and place them at the bottom of glasses.

  2. In a bowl, lightly whip the egg whites.

  3. Add sherry, powdered sugar, and a splash of orange juice or a pinch of nutmeg if desired.

  4. Fill the glasses with the whipped mixture.

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. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sherry + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sherry + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 mixture its light, airy structure.
Ladyfingers
Soak up the sherry and form the soft, moist base layer of the glass.
Sherry
Adds moisture and a distinctive wine flavour to both the ladyfingers and the mixture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the foam without making it gritty.

The step that matters

Lightly whip the egg whites. Egg white proteins unfold and trap air to form a foam. Under-whipping leaves a runny mixture that will not hold its shape, while over-whipping makes the foam dry and grainy.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, 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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