Skip to main content
Drink

Champagne Cider

A cider made from good apples, fermented, clarified with sulphate of lime, and served after standing until clear.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Champagne Cider

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Allow the cider from good, sound apples to ferment until palatable.

  2. Draw off the cider into a clean barrel.

  3. Mix ¼ ounce of sulphate of lime in a bucket of cider. Return the mixture to the barrel and shake well.

  4. Let the cider stand until clear, then it is ready for use.

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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

  2. Apple + limetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lime + cidertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sulphate of lime
Helps the cider clear by causing suspended particles to settle out.
Good, sound apples
Provide the juice that ferments into the cider.

The step that matters

Return the mixture to the barrel and shake well. The sulphate of lime must be evenly dispersed through the whole batch; if it stays clumped or uneven, parts of the cider will clear unevenly or not at all.

Swap the lime

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, cider):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cider. 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.

You might also like

Apple WaterApple Water81 recipesApple CiderApple Cider11 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes