Skip to main content
Drink

Ale Elip

A warm ale-based drink made with eggs, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Ale Elip

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ale eggnog

  1. Heat the ale in a pot until it just boils.

  2. In a large jug, beat the eggs with the sugar and nutmeg.

  3. Gradually pour the boiling ale into the egg mixture while continuously beating.

  4. Transfer the mixture back and forth between two jugs quickly to froth it.

Serve

  1. Serve warm and drink immediately for best results.

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Strong ale
Provides the liquid base and its malty flavour, and warms the eggs when poured in.
Eggs
Thicken the drink as they warm and add richness and body to the froth.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the ale.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling ale into the eggs. Pour slowly while beating constantly. Adding hot liquid too fast can scramble the eggs into lumps instead of a smooth, thickened mixture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes