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Drink

Champagne Cider

A fermented cider beverage sweetened with honey or sugar and fortified with spirit, then aged and finished with skimmed milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,336 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Champagne Cider

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and rest

  1. Mix the cider, spirit, and honey or sugar together.

  2. Let the mixture rest for two weeks.

Fine and bottle

  1. Fine the cider with ½ gallon of skimmed milk.

  2. Bottle in champagne bottles, silver, and label.

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. Honey + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Spirit + honeytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).

  3. Cider + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl decanoate (grape, waxy).

  4. Cider + spirittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cider + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cider
Forms the base liquid and provides the main apple flavour of the drink.
Spirit
Adds alcohol, which raises the strength and helps preserve the finished cider.
Honey or sugar
Adds sweetness and sugar that can ferment, shaping the flavour and body.
Skimmed milk
Acts as a fining agent, as its proteins bind haze particles so they settle out.

The step that matters

Fining with skimmed milk. Milk proteins bind suspended particles and haze in the cider so they can settle out. Adding the milk in the right amount and allowing the cider to settle leaves it clearer and more brilliant.

“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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