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Wine Flip

A warm wine-based flip made with wine, spices, sugar, egg yolk, and cream or cold wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Wine Flip

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the wine with nutmeg, cloves, and sugar.

  2. For every ½ cup of wine, add the yolk of 1 egg.

  3. Mix the egg yolk with a little cream or cold wine.

  4. Pour the mixture back and forth until well combined.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Wine + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-isoeugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg 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

Wine
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the spices and sugar.
Egg yolk
Thickens the mixture and adds richness as it combines with the warm wine.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity and the spices.
Cream
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolk with cream or cold wine before combining. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so adding raw yolk straight into hot wine can curdle it. Mixing the yolk first with a little cream or cold wine dilutes it and raises its temperature gradually, helping it blend smoothly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, nutmeg, sugar, egg, cream. 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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