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Drink

Boston Cream

A fizzy drink made with sugar, lemon, tartaric acid, egg whites, and carbonate of soda, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boston Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Pour boiling water over the sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add lemon juice or essence and tartaric acid.

  3. Strain the mixture when nearly cold.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  5. Bottle and cork the mixture.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 1 teaspoon of carbonate of soda with water in a tumbler.

  2. Add 1-2 tablespoons of cream and stir until it effervesces.

  3. Optionally, color part of the drink pink with cochineal.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body to the syrup base.
Tartaric acid
Adds sharp acidity and, with carbonate of soda, produces the fizz.
Egg whites
Whipped into the mixture to add foam and a light, frothy texture.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, making the drink effervesce.
Cream
Adds richness and creaminess to the drink.

The step that matters

Stirring the carbonate of soda into the tumbler. The soda must be mixed into the liquid just before serving, because the carbon dioxide released by its reaction with the acid escapes quickly. Serving it after the fizz has faded leaves the drink flat.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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