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Drink

Rum Flip

A frothy ale-based drink flavored with lemon, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, rum, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Rum Flip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the rind of the lemon with the sugar and place it in a jug with the spices and rum.

  2. Carefully break the four eggs into the same jug and beat all together until frothy.

Add the ale and serve

  1. Heat the ale until just boiling, then pour it into a separate jug.

  2. Froth the ale into the jug with the other ingredients, passing it back and forth until smooth and creamy.

  3. Serve and drink as soon as it is cool enough.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Rum + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the drink and give it a frothy, creamy body.
Ale
Hot ale is the liquid base, and frothing it into the eggs makes the drink smooth.
Rum
Adds alcohol flavour and aroma to the drink.
White sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon and spices.

The step that matters

Add the hot ale to the eggs gradually. Pouring hot liquid quickly onto eggs can cook them into lumps. Frothing the ale back and forth between jugs cools it and blends it in smoothly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rum, lemon, sugar, nutmeg, 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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