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Drink

Egg Nog

A chilled beverage made with egg yolk, sugar, lemon juice, orange juice, and folded beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Egg Nog

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Egg Nog

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Beat the yolk of the egg in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar and beat again until combined.

  3. Stir in the juice of half a lemon and the juice of one orange.

Add the egg white and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg white into the yolk mixture.

  3. Serve chilled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 enriches the base and the whipped white adds lightness and a foamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the beaten egg white.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity, giving the drink its citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg white. Stiff egg white holds air, and overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates it, losing the light foamy texture. Fold gently with a spatula so the air stays in the mixture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

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