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Soda Beer

A simple homemade soda beer made by boiling flour, water, and lemon juice, then adding baking soda to create foam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,404 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Soda Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, combine flour, water, and lemon juice.

  2. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Flavor to taste.

Make the fizz

  1. Dissolve baking soda in water.

  2. Pour the acid mixture into the glass with baking soda; it will foam.

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. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the liquid slightly as its starch cooks during the boil.
Lemon juice
Adds sourness and provides the acid that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, which creates the foam.

The step that matters

Pouring the acid mixture into the baking soda. The acid and baking soda react quickly and release carbon dioxide gas, so the mixture foams vigorously. Use a glass large enough to hold the foam, or it may overflow.

“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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