Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Soda Water
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Combine tartaric acid, sugar, and water in a pot.
Bring to a boil and boil hard for 5 minutes.
Remove from heat and add wintergreen or chosen flavoring.
Let the mixture cool, then fold in beaten egg whites.
Pour the mixture into fruit cans or bottles; it does not need to be airtight.
Serve
To serve, mix about 3 tablespoons of syrup with ⅔ glass of cold water.
Add soda to create foam, adjusting the amount based on your syrup.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tartaric acid
- Provides sourness and reacts with soda to produce the fizz.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and body to the syrup.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into the cooled syrup to add a light, foamy texture.
- Wintergreen
- Supplies the main aroma and flavor of the drink.
- Soda
- Reacts with the tartaric acid in the syrup to create foam and fizz.
The step that matters
Fold in the egg whites after cooling. Hot syrup can cook the egg whites and cause them to lose their airy foam, so the mixture should cool before folding them in gently.
“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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