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Drink

Champagne Cup

A sparkling cocktail made with lemon juice, powdered sugar, red curaçao, soda, cucumber rind, champagne, ice, and garnished with fruit and mint.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

serves 6

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cup

  1. Juice half a lemon into a large pitcher that holds at least five pints.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in 2 ounces of red curaçao and 1 bottle of plain soda.

  4. Add 2 slices of cucumber rind and 3 pints of champagne.

  5. Include ¼ pound of ice and mix thoroughly.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with strawberries, thin slices of pineapple, finely sliced orange, and fresh mint.

  2. Serve with six champagne glasses.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + minttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,998 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cucumber + minttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together884 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Champagne + pineappletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Champagne
Provides the sparkling base and carbonation that gives the cup its lively character.
Red curaçao
Adds orange-flavoured sweetness and colour to the blend.
Plain soda
Adds more carbonation and dilutes the wine for a lighter drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and curaçao.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cup and dissolves easily into the cold liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the sugar until dissolved before adding the sparkling ingredients. Powdered sugar dissolves quickly in acidic juice when stirred. Adding the champagne and soda before it dissolves can leave grains behind and lose the fizz as the liquid is stirred.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, champagne, pineapple, orange, mint. 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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