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Drink

Egg Flip, or Egg Hot

A warm alcoholic beverage made with ale, porter, gin, rum, eggs, sugar, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rum and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 646 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Egg Flip, or Egg Hot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the ale and porter in a saucepan over low heat until a thick cream forms, but do not let it boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat together the gin, rum, and eggs until well combined.

  3. Add sugar to the egg mixture to taste.

Combine and heat

  1. Remove the ale and porter from the heat and pour the egg mixture in, alternating back and forth several times.

  2. Return the mixture to the heat, stirring continuously without boiling.

  3. When it is just about to boil, take it off the heat, pour into a jug, and 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. Rum + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

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

  2. Rum + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

  3. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Gin + rumtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together40 recipes

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

  5. Gin + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Eggs
Thicken the drink into a creamy body as they gently set with heat.
Ale
Forms the thick, creamy base that carries the other liquors.
Porter
Adds malty depth and body to the base liquid.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the alcohol and malt bitterness.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the heat without boiling. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so stirring constantly and removing the pan just before boiling keeps the drink smooth and creamy rather than grainy.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (gin, rum, egg, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Mintfits less well

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