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Drink

Champagne Cup

A chilled champagne drink mixed with soda, brandy, sugar, crushed ice, and optional cucumber rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and brandy work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 169 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pour the champagne into a large silver or glass bowl that holds at least 3 quarts.

  2. Add the soda or seltzer water and brandy.

  3. Stir in the crushed ice with a silver spoon.

  4. Carefully add the sugar to avoid overflowing the wine.

  5. Optionally, add a little cucumber rind for extra flavor.

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. Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Champagne + cucumbertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Champagne + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Brandy + cucumbertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 sparkling wine base and most of the flavor of the cup.
Soda or seltzer water
Adds carbonation and dilutes the wine for a lighter, fizzy drink.
Brandy
Adds a spirited warmth and depth to the wine base.
Crushed ice
Chills the cup and slowly dilutes it as it melts.
Sugar
Sweetens the cup and balances the acidity of the wine.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar. Sugar dissolves better when it is finely sifted and added gently. Dumping it in quickly can cause the sparkling wine to foam up and overflow the bowl.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (champagne, brandy, sugar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Beetrootfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

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