Skip to main content
Drink

Seligson's Champagne Cocktail

A chilled champagne cocktail with crushed ice, sugar, bitters, and orange slice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and champagne work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Seligson's Champagne Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fill a champagne goblet one-third full with crushed ice.

  2. Add the lump of sugar and a dash of Angostura bitters.

  3. Place a slice of orange in the goblet.

Finish and serve

  1. Fill the goblet with champagne and stir gently.

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. Orange + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + champagnetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Supplies the main liquid and the bubbles that give the drink its sparkle.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitters and the acidity of the orange.
Angostura bitters
Adds a concentrated aromatic bitterness that gives the drink depth.
Orange
Adds citrus aroma and a fresh, slightly acidic flavour.
Crushed ice
Chills the drink and slowly dilutes it as it melts.

The step that matters

Stir gently after adding the champagne. Champagne's dissolved carbon dioxide escapes quickly when agitated. A gentle stir mixes the sugar and bitters through the drink while keeping as many bubbles as possible.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, champagne. 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

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipesChampagne PunchChampagne Punch24 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes