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Drink

Cider Nogg

A warm drink made with eggs, powdered sugar, cider, and optional ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and ginger are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Cider Nogg

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs until foamy.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar while continuing to beat.

  3. Slowly mix in the cider.

  4. If desired, add a little ginger for flavor.

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. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cider + gingertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Sugar + cidertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + gingertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,337 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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
Yolks whisk into a foamy base that gives the drink body and a creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the drink and dissolves easily into the beaten yolks.
Cider
Forms the main liquid, providing most of the volume and fruity flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly mix in the cider. Adding cider gradually to the beaten yolks helps keep the mixture smooth and blended. Adding it all at once can make the eggs separate or thin out unevenly.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cider. 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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