Soda Beer
Two pounds white sugar, whites of two eggs, two ounces tartaric acid, two table-spoons flour, two quarts water and juice of one lemon; boil two or three minutes, and flavor to taste. When wanted for use, take a half tea-spoon soda, dissolve in half a glass of water, pour into it about two table-spoons of the acid, and it will foam to the top of the glass. -Mrs. Geo. W. Sampson.
This is a soda-fountain syrup, not a brewed beer: you make a tart sweetened base ahead of time, then add bicarbonate of soda glass by glass to generate the fizz. Everything hinges on keeping the acid and the alkali apart until the moment of serving.
- Weights and volumesTwo pounds of sugar is about 4 1/2 cups; two ounces of tartaric acid is roughly 1/4 cup of the powder. Two quarts of water is 8 cups, which yields somewhere near 2 1/2 quarts of finished syrup.
- Tartaric acidStill sold as a food-grade powder for winemaking and confectionery. It is somewhat sharper on the palate than citric acid, and two ounces in two quarts gives a very tart base against a heavy load of sugar.
- "Soda" means bicarbonateHalf a teaspoon of ordinary baking soda per glass. Washing soda and baking powder are not substitutes: the first is sodium carbonate and far too alkaline to drink, the second already contains its own acid and spends itself as soon as it is wetted.
- What the eggs and flour doThe whites clarify the syrup as it heats, dragging scum to the surface to be skimmed; the flour was probably meant to give the liquid enough body to hold a head. Whisk both into the cold water before heating or you will get cooked shreds of egg and lumps of paste.
- The boilTwo or three minutes at a full boil is enough to cook the flour through and set the egg. Strain the syrup through muslin while hot and cool it before bottling.
- ServingUse a tall glass and pour the syrup onto the dissolved soda, not the other way round; a half-teaspoon of soda meeting that much acid climbs fast and will go over the rim of a tumbler. About 2 tablespoons of syrup per glass, topped with cold water.
- Flavoring"Flavor to taste" left the choice open; vanilla, lemon, wintergreen, sarsaparilla and ginger extracts were all in common use. Add off the heat so the volatile oils are not driven off; a teaspoon or two will carry the batch.
- Keeping itThis is a sugar syrup with egg and flour in it and no preservative. Refrigerate it and use it within a week or two; discard it if it turns cloudy or smells fermented.
Despite the name, nothing here is brewed or fermented -- "soda beer" borrowed the word the way root beer and birch beer did, as a promise of foam and a bracing flavor rather than alcohol. Recipes of this kind spread through American household books, letting families produce effervescence at home from two cheap chemicals: tartaric acid, a byproduct of winemaking sold by every druggist, and bicarbonate of soda from the pantry. The Dixie Cook Book, a large compilation of contributed receipts, prints it under the name of Mrs. Geo. W. Sampson, in the drinks chapter alongside lemonades and shrubs.