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Dessert

Zabaglione, an Italian Receipt

A custard-like Italian dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Zabaglione, an Italian Receipt

Ingredients

Directions

Make the zabaglione

  1. Combine egg yolks, sugar, and Marsala in a chocolate pot.

  2. Place the pot over low heat, stirring continuously.

  3. When the mixture begins to rise and thicken, remove from heat.

Serve

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

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

  2. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  3. Egg + winetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving it a rich, creamy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the yolks while whisking over heat.
Marsala wine
Adds its distinctive sweet, fortified flavour and thins the mixture to a pourable base.

The step that matters

Removing from heat as it thickens. Egg yolks set quickly and can scramble if overheated, so the pot should come off the heat as soon as the mixture rises and thickens.

“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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