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Drink

Cream Nectar, Imperial

A sweet, carbonated beverage made with water, sugar, tartaric acid, gum arabic, flour, egg whites, syrup, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream Nectar, Imperial

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine water, loaf sugar, tartaric acid, and gum arabic in a kettle.

  2. Heat on the fire.

  3. Mix flour with beaten egg whites and add ½ pint of water in a bowl.

  4. When the kettle mixture is blood warm, add the flour and egg mixture.

  5. Boil for 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Mix 3 tablespoons of syrup with a glass half or two-thirds full of water to serve.

  2. Add ⅓ teaspoon of super-carbonate of soda, stir well, 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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the syrup base.
Tartaric acid
Adds acidity, giving the drink a sharp, tart flavour.
Egg whites
Whipped proteins add foam and body to the drink.
Gum-arabic
Acts as a stabiliser, helping keep the mixture smooth and foamy.
Super-carbonate of soda
Reacts with the acidic mixture to release carbon dioxide, producing fizz.

The step that matters

Adding the super-carbonate of soda. Soda reacts with the acid immediately and releases gas quickly, so it should be stirred in just before serving to keep the fizz lively.

“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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