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Drink

Cream Beer

A frothy beverage made from sugar, water, lemon, tartaric acid, egg whites, flour, checkerberry essence, syrup, soda, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil sugar, hot water, lemon juice, and tartaric acid together for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg whites and sifted flour, stirring gently.

  3. Flavor with checkerberry essence and bottle the mixture.

  4. Store in a cool place and shake vigorously before using.

Serve

  1. To serve, put 2 tablespoons of syrup in a tumbler filled two-thirds with ice or cold water.

  2. Add ⅓ teaspoon of soda, stir, and drink while foaming.

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. Egg + flourtop 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. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff froth, they trap air and give the beer its light, foamy body.
Sifted flour
Adds body and helps stabilise the foam so it holds together in the drink.
Tartaric acid
Provides sharp acidity that balances the sugar and adds a tangy bite.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, producing fizz when stirred into the drink.

The step that matters

Adding the soda. The soda must be added to the acidic syrup-and-ice tumbler just before drinking. Its reaction with the acid releases carbon dioxide, which creates the foam; if it sits too long, the fizz is lost.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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