Skip to main content
Drink

Cream Nectar

Cream Nectar is a sweet beverage made from water, sugar, egg white, tartaric acid, vanilla, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Cream Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water and sugar together until dissolved.

  2. Add the beaten egg white to clarify the mixture, then strain it.

  3. Once cooled, mix in the tartaric acid and vanilla.

  4. Bottle the mixture.

Serve

  1. To serve, pour a wine glass of nectar into water until the glass is three parts full.

  2. Add a small amount of soda, about the size of a ten‑cent piece, and stir.

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

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup.
Egg white
Binds impurities during heating so they can be strained out, clarifying the mixture.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Clarifying with egg white. Egg white proteins coagulate when heated and trap cloudy particles, which then lift out when the mixture is strained. The mixture should be heated and then strained cleanly so the nectar stays clear rather than murky.

“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