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Drink

Cream Nectar

A sweet, frothy drink made with water, sugar, tartaric acid, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. In a bowl, combine water, sugar, tartaric acid, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites to the mixture and stir well.

Bottle and serve

  1. Bottle the mixture.

  2. To serve, pour 1 tablespoon of the mixture into a tumbler and fill with water.

  3. Add a little soda to create foam.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the drink.
Tartaric acid
Adds a sharp, tart flavour and acidity to the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds extra acidity and brightness to balance the sweetness.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, giving the drink a light, frothy texture.

The step that matters

Adding the soda to create foam. Soda reacts with the acid in the mixture to release carbon dioxide, which creates the foam. Adding too much at once can cause the drink to overflow or lose its texture, so use only a little.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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