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Drink

Cream of Nectar

A sweet beverage made from sugar, tartaric acid, water, egg whites, flour, lemon extract, nectar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Cream of Nectar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve 3 pounds of sugar and 2 ounces of tartaric acid in 1 quart of boiling water, then let it cool.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat together the whites of 3 eggs and 3 tablespoons of flour.

Make the syrup

  1. Stir the egg mixture into the cooled sugar mixture and boil for 5 minutes, allowing the scum to boil in.

  2. Add 1 bottle of lemon extract or your preferred flavor.

Serve

  1. To serve, mix 2 tablespoons of the nectar with a tumbler of cold water and add ½ 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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 once dissolved in boiling water.
Tartaric acid
Adds acidity that gives the syrup a tart, bright edge.
Egg whites
Whipped proteins that foam and help lighten the mixture as it is stirred in.
Flour
Thickens the egg mixture slightly so it blends smoothly into the syrup.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the drink, releasing carbon dioxide for fizz.

The step that matters

Boiling after adding the egg mixture. Boiling for the full 5 minutes lets the egg proteins coagulate and rise with the scum, which is then skimmed or incorporated. Stirring too early or stopping the boil short can leave the syrup cloudy or unevenly set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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