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Egg Flip

A warm alcoholic beverage made with ale, eggs, sugar, spices, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Egg Flip

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 ↓

Egg Flip

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, heat 1 quart of ale until just before boiling.

  2. In a separate jug, mix 3-4 eggs with ¼ pound of sugar and the spices.

  3. Add 2 glasses of rum or brandy to the egg mixture.

  4. Pour the hot ale into the jug with the egg mixture.

  5. Pour the mixture back and forth between the jugs until smooth.

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 + 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. Nutmeg + rumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

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

  5. Ginger + rumtop 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
Set and thicken the drink, giving it a rich, creamy body when heated.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the ale and spirits.
Home-brewed ale
Forms the liquid base of the drink and carries the other flavours.
Old rum or brandy
Adds warmth and depth of flavour from the spirit.

The step that matters

Pour the hot ale into the egg mixture. Eggs scramble if they meet very hot liquid too fast. Pouring slowly while mixing, or pouring back and forth between jugs, gradually raises the egg temperature so the drink stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the ginger

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

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

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