To prevent water evaporation during all measurements, the sample was overlaid with a low viscosity paraffin oil (Carl Roth GmbH & Co. KG, Germany). More details on this method can be found in Due to the absence of gelation of the samples without added salt, the measurements were carried out using a double gap geometry (DG26.7-SN97573, Anton Paar GmbH, Austria), which is suited for less viscous samples. The amplitude  was set to 10 % during the frequency sweep between 0.1 and 10 Hz to ensure that the strain applied remained within the linear viscoelastic region. In case of the gel-forming samples containing CaCl2, a plate-plate geometry (PP25-SN19091, Anton Paar GmbH, Austria) with a diameter of 25 mm and a constant gap width of 1 mm was used. The amplitude  during the frequency sweep had to be set to 2 % to remain the strain within the linear viscoelastic region. It should be noted that gel formation can potentially lead to an inaccurate measurement due to volume changes during gelation . Therefore, the normal force was carefully monitored during the cooling process and the measurement. No significant deviation was detected indicating that gelation did not impact the accuracy of the measurement. Triplicate measurements were conducted for each sample and the corresponding standard deviation was calculated. The graphs of the storage and loss moduli for each sample are provided in the supplementary materials.