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Drink

Cream Soda

A sweet carbonated beverage made with a syrup of water, sugar, lemon juice, tartaric acid, egg whites, flour, and wintergreen essence.

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 water, sugar, lemon juice, and tartaric acid for a few minutes.

  2. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Add the egg foam

  1. Beat egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Slowly sift in flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Flavor with wintergreen essence.

  4. When the syrup is nearly cool, stir in the egg mixture.

Bottle and store

  1. Once cold, pour into a scalded stone jug and cork tightly.

  2. Store in a cold place.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of syrup with a glass of water.

  2. Add a quarter teaspoon of soda just before drinking and stir well.

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

White sugar
Provides the sweetness and body of the syrup.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that lightens the drink and gives it a soft texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, tart sourness that balances the sugar.
Lemon juice
Adds extra acidity and brightness to the syrup.
Wintergreen essence
Gives the drink its strong minty, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg foam only when the syrup is nearly cool. Hot syrup would cook the egg whites and collapse their foam, so they would not blend smoothly. Cooler syrup keeps the foam intact and gives the drink a light, even body.

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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