Skip to main content
Drink

Egg-flip

A cocktail made with eggs, sugar, boiling water, cognac, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cognac brandy and rum share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol, which smells allspice, anise. The science ↓

Egg-flip

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Beat the eggs, omitting the whites of two.

  2. Work the sugar into the eggs by beating.

Make the flip

  1. Pour in the boiling water, about half a pint at a time, stirring well.

  2. Mix in the brandy and rum.

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. Cognac brandy + rumtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  2. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + rumtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,589 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Sugar + cognac brandytop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together301 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide body and richness, giving the drink a thick, creamy texture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the alcohol's sharpness.
Boiling water
Thins the mixture into a drinkable liquid while gently warming the eggs.
Cognac brandy
Adds warming spirit flavour and aroma.
Old rum
Adds depth, aroma and a rounded, molasses-like flavour.

The step that matters

Pour in the boiling water gradually. Adding the boiling water a little at a time while stirring gently warms the eggs, a process called tempering. Pouring it in all at once can scramble the egg proteins, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, uniform drink.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes