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Egg Flip

A custard-like dish made by mixing milk, lemon rind, egg yolk, sugar, and folded egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Egg Flip

Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Egg Flip

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the milk

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the thinly pared yellow rind of the lemon to the milk.

  3. Strain the hot milk to remove the lemon rind.

Whisk and combine

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk until creamy.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg white until stiff peaks form.

  3. Stir the sugar into the egg yolk, then gently fold in the beaten egg white.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base, adding moisture and a soft, creamy body to the drink.
Egg
Yolk adds richness and body, while the whipped white adds air and a light, foamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the egg and lemon.
Lemon rind
Adds a bright citrus aroma to the warm milk.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg white. The air trapped in the whisked white gives the flip its lightness. Folding gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps those bubbles from collapsing and deflating the mixture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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