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Drink

A Summer Drink

A fizzy lemon drink made with soda, tartaric acid, lemon oil, sugar, and egg whites.

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

Prepare the syrups

  1. Mix cold water, white sugar, oil of lemon, flour, and egg whites together.

  2. Divide the mixture in half.

  3. Add 4 ounces of carbonate of soda to one half and bottle it.

  4. Add 3 ounces of tartaric acid to the other half and bottle it.

Serve

  1. To serve, take 2 pint tumblers and add 1 tablespoon of syrup from each bottle to each tumbler.

  2. Fill each tumbler half full with fresh cold water.

  3. Pour both tumblers into one and it is ready to serve.

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

White sugar
Provides the sweetness and the bulk of the syrup.
Egg whites
Add foam and body to the syrup, giving the drink a light texture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, making the drink fizz.
Tartaric acid
Reacts with carbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide and adds sharp acidity.

The step that matters

Keeping the two bottles separate. Carbonate of soda and tartaric acid react as soon as they meet in water, releasing carbon dioxide. Keeping them in separate bottles until serving preserves the fizz for the drinker.

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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