This Long-Forgotten Drink Is Crème Brûlée as a Cocktail

In the world of cocktails, flips are some of the oldest drinks. Their evolution from a seafaring sailor’s favorite to a fireside tavern classic to a refined post-Civil War cocktail has made them a popular muse with a certain set of cocktail nerds. But its influence is now spreading further, to the world of chic restaurant bars like Tomat in LA, where Miley Aryucharoen (one of Punch’s Best New Bartenders of 2026) is serving an innovative version of the drink that changes with the seasons.

Specifically, Aryucharoen takes inspiration from the Boston Flip, a variation that sprung up around the turn of the 20th century. The earliest-known published recipe dates to 1904 in Frank Newman’s American-Bar: Boissons Anglaises & Américaines, where the recipe calls for equal parts rye and Madeira, a touch of sugar and a whole egg. In the 1930s and ’40s, the drink also appeared in the Mr. Boston Deluxe Bartender’s Guides and The How and When by Hyman Gale and Gerald F. Marco, featuring similar proportions but calling only for an egg yolk rather than a whole egg.

Like the original, Aryucharoen calls for a whole egg, but she takes that portion in a surprising new direction. Instead of just cracking a whole egg into the shaker, she created a proprietary “custard base” that does the triple duty of sweetening, flavoring and thickening the drink. It’s made with roasted pistachios, whole milk, heavy cream, sugar, spices, brandy and egg yolk powder; the latter ingredient is dehydrated in-house and was originally created as a way to use up the abundance of leftover egg yolks from the restaurant’s popular pavlova dessert. Since the bar team has egg whites on hand to make sours, bartenders at Tomat add the egg white to the tin separately.

Aryucharoen also opts for a much more spirit-forward profile (5:1) than the original ratio (1:1). She feels that, in this drink, the rye should be the star, but in a way that shows its softer side. “Usually when people see rye,” she says, “they don’t think that it has the capacity to be creamy and gentle.” She favors Rye & Sons, which she says has a good amount of spice and, at nearly 100 proof, stands up to the rich custard in the drink.