Name: Soda Cocktail
Ingredients: ½ teaspoon Angostura bitters; ½ teaspoon powdered sugar; chipped ice; soda water; small piece of lemon peel

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soda Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a large soda-water glass halfway with chipped ice.
Add the Angostura bitters and powdered sugar.
Fill the glass with soda water.
Place a small piece of lemon peel on top and serve with straws.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Angostura bitters: Adds aromatic spice and bitterness that balance the sweetness and lift the drink's flavour.
Powdered sugar: Dissolves quickly in the cold drink and adds a touch of sweetness to offset the bitters.
Soda water: Provides carbonation and dilution, giving the drink its light, fizzy body.

“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.