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Champagne, and Its Adulterations

A homemade sparkling wine made by fermenting a sugar syrup with yeast, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 711 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Champagne, and Its Adulterations

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the white sugar and brown sugar in the water for 2 hours, skimming the mixture occasionally.

  2. Pour the mixture into a tub and dissolve the acid in it before it cools.

Ferment and store

  1. Add yeast and allow it to ferment.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a clean cask and add the white grape wine or perry and French brandy.

  3. Seal the cask tightly and store it in a cool place.

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. Grape + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together711 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon 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

White sugar and brown sugar
Provide the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and sweetness in the finished drink.
Crystalline lemon acid or tartaric acid
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the drink tart and balanced.
White grape wine or perry
Adds fruity flavour and extra fermentable sugars to the mixture.
French brandy
Adds alcohol strength and aroma to the finished drink.

The step that matters

Dissolving the acid before the mixture cools. Acid must be fully dissolved while the syrup is still warm so it mixes evenly. Adding it to cooled or unevenly mixed liquid can leave pockets of uneven acidity that affect the flavour and the fermentation.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, grape, brandy. 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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