Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Soda Beer
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Dissolve 4 pounds of white sugar in 2 pints of hot water.
Dissolve ¼ pound of tartaric acid in 1 pint of cold water and boil for a few minutes.
Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg whites and mix well.
Serve
To serve, put about 3 teaspoons of the mixture in a glass, fill with cold water, add a little soda, stir, and drink quickly while foaming.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 liquid.
- Tartaric acid
- Adds sourness and reacts with soda to release fizzing carbon dioxide.
- Soda
- Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating fizz and foam.
- Egg whites
- Trap air when beaten, helping the drink form and hold a foam.
The step that matters
Drink quickly while foaming. The foam comes from carbon dioxide released when soda meets the acid. That gas escapes steadily, so the foam and fizz fade if the drink sits.
“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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