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Drink

Soda-cream

A chilled lemon soda drink made with sugar, water, egg whites, lemon extract, ice water, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Soda-cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve lemon sugar in water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add beaten egg whites and boil for 4 minutes.

  3. Stir and strain the mixture, then let it cool.

Bottle and serve

  1. Add lemon extract and bottle the mixture.

  2. For serving, mix 4 tablespoons of the mixture with ice water, then add baking soda and stir.

  3. Enjoy.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemon sugar
Provides sweetness and dissolves into the water to form the base syrup.
Egg whites
Add foam structure and body to the mixture when boiled and strained.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic mixture to release carbon dioxide, creating fizz when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding baking soda to the serving mixture. Baking soda fizzes when it meets acid. Adding it to the diluted mixture just before serving keeps the carbonation lively, and adding it too early or in too large an amount can cause it to lose its fizz or taste soapy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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