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Drink

Iced Fruit Egg-nog

A chilled beverage made with egg yolk, milk, fruit juice, and whipped egg white, topped with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Iced Fruit Egg-nog

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the egg yolk and white.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with confectioners sugar and lemon juice until frothy.

  3. Fill a tall glass three-quarters full with rich milk.

Build and serve

  1. Whip the egg white until firm, adding fruit juice and powdered sugar.

  2. Spoon the whipped egg white on top of the milk mixture in a pyramidal form.

  3. Dust with grated nutmeg and chill on ice.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 yolk
Adds richness and body, and becomes frothy when beaten with sugar.
Egg white
Whipped to a firm foam that forms the light topping.
Rich milk
Forms the base of the drink, giving it body and creaminess.
Confectioners sugar
Sweetens the yolk mixture and helps it stay smooth when beaten.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the whipped egg white and helps it hold its structure.

The step that matters

Whip the egg white until firm. Egg white must be whipped until it forms stable peaks; under-whipped foam collapses and sinks into the milk. Any trace of yolk or fat in the white will prevent it from whipping properly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, 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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