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Drink

Cream Beer

A sweetened, flavored beverage made with sugar, tartaric acid, lemon juice, water, egg whites, flour, and flavoring.

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 base

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

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Add flavoring and bottle

  1. Add beaten egg whites, flour, and flavoring to the cooled mixture.

  2. Bottle the mixture and keep it cool.

Serve

  1. Mix 2 tablespoons of the mixture in a tumbler of water.

  2. Add ⅓ teaspoon 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 + 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the drink.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity and reacts with soda to release carbon dioxide.
Egg whites
Create foam and a light, creamy texture.
Flour
Adds body and helps the drink hold a smoother texture.
Soda
Reacts with the acid to release gas, producing fizz.
Flavoring
Gives the beer its aroma and taste.

The step that matters

Adding the soda. Soda reacts immediately with the acid and releases carbon dioxide, which creates the fizz. The amount is small, so it should be measured carefully and mixed in promptly, since too much can cause overfoaming and an off taste.

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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