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Dessert

Egg Flip

A dessert made by mixing beaten egg white with boiling milk, seasoned with white pepper and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Egg Flip

Why it works: Milk and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,738 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Egg Flip

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  3. Sprinkle the white pepper over the beaten egg white.

  4. Pour the boiling milk over the egg white while stirring vigorously.

  5. Add sugar to taste and serve immediately.

  6. Optionally, add brandy if desired.

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. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the drink its light, frothy body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base, warmed so it partly cooks and thickens the beaten white.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling milk while stirring vigorously. Adding hot milk to beaten egg white must be done quickly and with constant stirring so the foam blends evenly instead of deflating or clumping as the egg proteins warm and set.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, brandy. 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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