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Drink

Locomotive

A hot cocktail made with honey, eggs, cloves, curacao, and red burgundy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and clove work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 736 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Locomotive

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine honey, egg yolks, essence of cloves, and curacao. Beat well with a whisk.

  2. Heat the red burgundy over the fire until hot.

  3. Whisk the hot burgundy into the bowl with the other ingredients.

  4. Serve hot in glasses.

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. Honey + clovetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together736 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Honey + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + clovetop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Egg and clove barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,584 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the drink and give it a smooth, creamy body when whisked with heat.
Honey
Adds sweetness and a rounded, mellow flavour that balances the wine.
Red burgundy
Serves as the warm liquid base that gives the drink its main body and character.

The step that matters

Whisking in the hot burgundy. Pouring hot wine into the egg mixture while whisking constantly keeps the yolks moving so they warm gradually. Without this, the yolks can scramble and the drink turns grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against honey, 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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