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Porter Soda

A sweet soda made by simmering porter with sugar and tartaric acid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Porter Soda

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the quart of water.

  2. Add the bottle of porter and let it simmer slowly.

Finish

  1. Dissolve the tartaric acid in the tumbler of water.

  2. Stir the tartaric acid mixture into the syrup just before removing it from the heat.

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and the body of the syrup.
Porter
Adds the beer flavor and color to the syrup.
Tartaric acid
Adds sourness that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the tartaric acid just before removing the syrup from the heat. Acid speeds up the breakdown of sucrose into glucose and fructose, a process called inversion, and heat speeds it up further. Adding the acid mixture last limits how long the acid and heat act on the sugar, which keeps the syrup's sweetness and texture under control.

“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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