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Drink

Egg Cream

A cold beverage made with egg yolks, milk or cream, and cinnamon oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Egg Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine the yolks of three eggs with ½ cup of good new milk or cream.

  2. Add two drops of oil of cinnamon and mix well.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Egg + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

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

Egg and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,058 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 body, and help the drink feel smooth and creamy.
Milk or cream
Supplies moisture and fat, giving the drink its soft, creamy texture.
Oil of cinnamon
Adds concentrated aroma and spice flavour in a very small amount.

The step that matters

Adding the oil of cinnamon. Cinnamon oil is very concentrated, so two drops is enough and more can overpower the drink. Oils do not blend into milk on their own, so mixing well spreads the flavour evenly instead of leaving it in spots.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk. 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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