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Drink

Cream Beer

A beverage made by boiling tartaric acid, sugar, lemon juice, and water, then adding egg whites, flour, and wintergreen essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

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

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

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

Serve

  1. To serve, take 2 tablespoons of the syrup, add ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, stir, and fill the glass with water.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz when served.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Beaten egg whites
Add foam and body to the mixture, giving a creamy head to the drink.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda when serving. Baking soda and the acid in the syrup react to release carbon dioxide, so the fizz depends on combining them at the right moment. Adding it too early, or in too large an amount, can lose most of the fizz before the drink is served.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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