Skip to main content
Drink

Soda Beer

A carbonated beverage made from sugar, water, tartaric acid, egg whites, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soda Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve 4 pounds of white sugar in 2 pints of hot water.

  2. Dissolve ¼ pound of tartaric acid in 1 pint of cold water and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the 6 beaten egg whites.

  5. Bottle for use.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, put about 3 teaspoons of the mixture in a glass.

  2. Fill partially with cold water.

  3. Add a little baking soda and stir.

  4. Drink quickly while 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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the base mixture.
Tartaric acid
Supplies acidity that reacts with baking soda to produce foam and fizz.
Egg whites
Add foam-forming proteins that help hold bubbles in the drink.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide gas when mixed with the acidic base, causing fizzing.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda at serving. Baking soda must be added just before drinking, because the acid-base reaction releases carbon dioxide quickly and the foam fades as the gas escapes.

“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

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes