Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Egg-snow
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the milk and powdered sugar together in a saucepan for 15 minutes.
Remove the saucepan from the heat.
Mould spoonfuls of frothed egg whites into egg shapes and drop them into the milk.
Use all the frothed whites in the same way.
Return the saucepan to the heat and boil for 2 minutes.
Remove the egg whites with a skimmer and place them in cream.
Boil for 2 more minutes, then drain the whites over the milk.
Arrange the whites in a pyramid on a deep dish.
Pour the remaining milk gently over the yolks and stir well with a wooden spoon.
Stir for about 15 minutes until the cream thickens, then pour over the whites and serve cold.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
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