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Drink

Cream Nectar

A sweet syrup made from tartaric acid, sugar, lemon juice, water, egg whites, flour, vanilla, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine tartaric acid, white sugar, lemon juice, and water.

  2. Boil the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Allow it to cool slightly, then add the beaten egg whites, flour, and vanilla.

  4. Bottle the syrup and store it in a cool place.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of syrup with a tumbler of water and stir in 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

White sugar
Provides sweetness and the bulk of the syrup.
Egg whites
Add foam and body to the syrup when beaten into the cooled mixture.
Tartaric acid
Adds tartness and balances the sweetness of the sugar.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid when stirred into the drink, producing fizz.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg whites after boiling. If the syrup is still too hot, the egg whites cook and clump instead of blending smoothly, so letting it cool slightly first helps the foam stay light and evenly mixed.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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