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Drink

Cream Soda

A fizzy drink made with tartaric acid, sugar, lemon juice, water, egg whites, flour, winter‑green essence, syrup, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream Soda

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil tartaric acid, sugar, lemon juice, and water together for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool nearly to room temperature.

Combine and bottle

  1. Beat the egg whites, then mix the beaten egg whites with flour and essence of winter-green.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the cooled syrup and mix well.

  3. Bottle the mixture and store it in a cool place.

Serve

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of the syrup with 1 tumbler of water, then add 1 teaspoon of soda.

  2. Drink quickly.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped whites add foam and lightness to the body of the drink.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and bulk in the syrup.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to release carbon dioxide, making it fizz.
Flour
Helps bind the egg-white foam into the mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide quickly, so it should be added just before drinking. Once the fizz is gone, the drink goes flat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, syrup. 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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