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Drink

Silver Top Beer

A homemade carbonated beverage made from sugar syrup, egg whites, flour, lemon oil, soda, and tartaric acid.

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 ↓

Silver Top Beer

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the crushed sugar in hot water over low heat.

  2. Beat the egg whites with flour and lemon oil until foamy.

  3. Divide the syrup into two equal parts.

  4. Add carbonate of soda to one part and tartaric acid to the other.

  5. Bottle tightly and mix 1 tablespoon of each syrup with ½ cup of water before serving.

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

Crushed sugar
Provides sweetness and the body of the syrup base.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, creating a light foam that gives the drink its silvery top.
Carbonate of soda
Reacts with tartaric acid to release carbon dioxide, which makes the drink fizz.
Tartaric acid
Reacts with carbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide and adds a sharp, tart taste.
Lemon oil
Adds a citrus aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Keep the soda and acid syrups separate until serving. Carbonate of soda and tartaric acid react as soon as they meet in liquid, releasing carbon dioxide. Mixing them early lets the fizz escape before the drink is served, so the two halves should only be combined at the end.

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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