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Drink

Soda Water

A fizzy beverage made by boiling sugar, egg whites, tartaric acid, flour, water, and lemon juice, then adding soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Soda Water

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, egg whites, tartaric acid, flour, water, and lemon juice for a few minutes.

  2. Flavor to taste.

Serve

  1. To serve, dissolve 1 teaspoon of soda in ⅓ cup of water.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of the mixture to the soda water and watch it foam.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 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. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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
Foam up and help clarify the syrup as they cook.
Tartaric acid
Adds sourness and reacts with soda to produce fizz.
Soda
Reacts with the acid to release carbon dioxide, creating the fizz.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the syrup to the soda water. The soda must be fully dissolved before the mixture is added, and the syrup should be added in measured amounts. Acid and bicarbonate react quickly to release carbon dioxide, so the foam is produced at once and can overflow if the mixture is added too fast.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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