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Drink

Cream Soda

A sweet carbonated beverage made with tartaric acid, sugar, water, lemon juice, egg whites, flour, essence, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cream Soda

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil tartaric acid, sugar, and water with lemon juice for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add the beaten egg whites, flour, and essence.

  3. Mix well and bottle the mixture.

  4. Store in a cool place.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of the syrup with 1 glass of water and add ¼ teaspoon of soda.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Tartaric acid
Provides the sharp, acidic bite that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
White sugar
Supplies sweetness and body to the syrup.
Whites of eggs
Add foam and body to the syrup when beaten and stirred in.
Flour
Helps thicken and stabilise the mixture so it stays suspended.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to produce fizz when added to water.

The step that matters

Adding the soda at serving. Soda reacts with the acid in the syrup to release carbon dioxide, which creates the fizz. Adding it to the mixed drink just before serving keeps the bubbles lively, since the gas escapes over time.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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