Skip to main content
Drink

Cream Nectar

A chilled beverage made from tartaric acid, sugar, Rochelle salts, egg whites, and soda, served over cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 tartaric acid, sugar, and Rochelle salts in a pot and heat nearly to boiling.

  2. Remove from heat and add the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

  4. Pour the mixture from the sediment into bottles.

Serve

  1. To serve, take ⅓ cup of the mixture and add it to a tumbler nearly full of cold water.

  2. Add a few drops of lemon juice and 1 tablespoon 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 + 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

Tartaric acid
Provides the sharp, sour acidity that gives the drink its tang.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the concentrated mixture.
Egg whites
Clarify the mixture as they set during heating, so sediment can be strained off.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic mixture to release carbon dioxide, making it fizz.

The step that matters

Adding the soda to the glass. Soda reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, so it should be added at serving time, when the fizz is wanted. Adding it too early lets the drink lose its effervescence.

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.

You might also like

Lemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesLemon SquashLemon Squash10 recipesLemon EssenceLemon Essence8 recipes