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Dessert

Cream Nectar

A sweet syrup made with sugar, tartaric acid, water, egg whites, flour, lemon juice, and wintergreen essence.

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 Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and tartaric acid in water in a pot.

  2. Boil for about 5 minutes, then let it cool.

  3. Beat egg whites until very stiff, then gradually beat in flour and lemon juice.

  4. Stir this mixture into the cooled liquid.

  5. Add essence of wintergreen and mix well.

  6. Bottle and store in a cool place.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of syrup in a tumbler with water and a pinch of soda. Stir well.

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. Flour + lemontop 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. Egg + lemontop 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 syrup.
Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam that lightens the mixture and adds texture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness.
Flour
Helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam in the mixture.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until very stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to a firm foam before the flour and lemon juice are folded in. Under-whipped whites will not hold air, so the mixture stays dense and loses its light texture.

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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