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Cream Nectar

A sweet syrup made from sugar, tartaric acid, water, egg whites, lemon acid, and soda, served diluted with water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar, tartaric acid, and water in a pot.

  2. Heat gently until warm.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Carefully fold in the beaten egg whites without boiling.

  5. Once cooled, strain the mixture.

  6. Stir in the lemon acid.

Make the fizzy drink

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of the syrup with a glass of water filled two-thirds full.

  2. Add a small amount of carbonate of soda.

  3. Stir until it effervesces.

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. Egg + lemontop 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

Refined sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Egg whites
Help clarify the syrup as they set and are strained out.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating fizz.

The step that matters

Carefully fold in the beaten egg whites without boiling.. Boiling would cause the egg whites to cook and scramble into the syrup, so they cannot set and be strained out cleanly. Keeping the mixture below boiling lets the whites coagulate in suspension for clean clarification.

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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