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Drink

Drink for Invalids

A light egg-based drink mixed with sugar and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Drink for Invalids

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Separate the egg and beat the yolk with the sugar until very light.

  2. Pour a little wine over the mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Add the well-beaten egg white and mix gently.

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

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

  2. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

  3. Egg + winetop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Yolk and white add richness and a light, airy body when the white is beaten in.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and helps the yolk beat to a light, thick texture.
Wine
Adds acidity and flavour, thinning the mixture as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Pouring in the wine while stirring. Adding wine slowly and stirring constantly keeps the yolk mixture smooth; dumping it in at once can cause the egg to thin unevenly or curdle.

“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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