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Drink

A Summer Drink

A chilled lemon drink made with sugar, lemon oil, flour, egg whites, soda, and tartaric acid, served over cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

A Summer Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Make and bottle the syrups

  1. In a large bowl, mix cold water, white sugar, oil of lemon, flour, and egg whites until well combined.

  2. Divide the mixture in half.

  3. To one half, add carbonate of soda and bottle it.

  4. To the other half, add tartaric acid and bottle it.

Serve

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of each syrup to each glass.

  2. Fill each glass halfway with fresh cold water.

  3. Pour both glasses into one tumbler and enjoy.

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. Flour + eggtop 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).

Flour and egg 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

Carbonate of soda
Reacts with tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, which makes the drink fizz.
Tartaric acid
Acid that reacts with the carbonate of soda to produce the fizz and a tart bite.
White sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup, balancing the acid.
Egg whites
Whip into foam that helps hold bubbles and gives the syrup a light body.
Oil of lemon
Supplies the concentrated lemon aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Bottling the two halves separately. Carbonate of soda and tartaric acid react as soon as they meet and release carbon dioxide. Keeping each half in its own bottle preserves the gas until the syrups are poured together for serving.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, egg. 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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