Skip to main content
Drink

Egg, White Of, and Soda Water

A light beverage made by whisking egg white, adding sugar, brandy or lemon juice, and soda water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,340 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Egg, White Of, and Soda Water

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Whisk the egg white to a stiff froth.

  2. Add the sugar and transfer to a tumbler.

  3. Gently mix in the brandy.

  4. Pour in the soda water and serve immediately.

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. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  2. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 white
Whisked to a stiff froth, it traps air and gives the drink a light, foamy texture.
Brandy, sherry, or lemon juice
Adds acidity and flavour that brightens the drink and balances the sweetness.
Soda water
Carbonation lifts the foam and adds a lively, fizzy texture.

The step that matters

Gently mix in the brandy. Stirring too hard knocks air out of the whisked egg white foam, so the drink loses its light texture. Folding gently keeps the froth intact.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes