Name: Cream Nectar
Ingredients: 3 pounds white sugar; 2 ounces tartaric acid; 1 quart soft water; 3 egg whites; Flavoring of choice; Ice water; Bicarbonate of soda

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 ↓

Cream Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the nectar

Combine white sugar and tartaric acid in a quart of soft water and let sit overnight.
Stir in the well-beaten egg whites.
Add your desired flavoring and bottle the mixture.
Store in a cool place.

Serve

To serve, mix 3 tablespoons of the nectar with 1 glass of ice water.
Add enough bicarbonate of soda to make it effervesce.

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.

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 the bulk of the syrup body.
Tartaric acid: Adds sharp acidity and, with bicarbonate of soda, produces fizz when serving.
Egg whites: Add foam and a light body to the mixture when stirred in.
Bicarbonate of soda: Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, making the drink effervesce.

“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.