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Champagne Water Ice

A chilled beverage made from Champagne, lemons, sugar, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Champagne Water Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour the Champagne into an open vessel.

  2. Rub the outer rinds of the lemons on the sugar.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into the Champagne.

  4. Add the piece of sugar to the mixture.

Freeze

  1. Put the syrup into the basin.

  2. Freeze the mixture in the pot, working well.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Champagne + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Champagne + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Lemon and sugar 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

Champagne
Provides the main liquid and sparkling character of the ice.
Lemons
Supply acidity and aroma from the juice and oils in the rind.
Rough loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and draws oils from the lemon rind when rubbed on it.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen mixture.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture in the pot, working well. Stirring or working the mixture as it freezes breaks up ice crystals, giving a finer, smoother texture rather than a hard, coarse block.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, sugar, syrup. 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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