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Drink

Cream Beer

A beverage made with tartaric acid, sugar, lemon juice, water, egg whites, flour, wintergreen essence, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cream Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup base

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

  2. Let the mixture cool slightly, then add the beaten egg whites, flour, and wintergreen essence.

  3. Bottle the mixture and keep it cool.

Serve

  1. To serve, put 3 tablespoons of the mixture in a glass of ice water.

  2. Add a little baking soda and drink while it is foaming.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

Tartaric acid
Provides the sour, acidic bite and reacts with baking soda to create foam.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup.
Eggs
Whites beaten in add foam and a light, creamy texture.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives it body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, causing the drink to foam.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the acid right away to release carbon dioxide, so it should be added just before drinking to keep the foam lively.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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