Name: Champagne Cups
Ingredients: 2 bottles of champagne; 4 teaspoons of white sugar; 2 bottles of soda water; ½ lemon, juiced; ½ lemon, sliced; ⅓ cup of curaçao; a few sprigs of borage; ice

Why it works: Lemon and borage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 102 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Champagne Cups

Ingredients

Directions

In a large pitcher, combine the champagne, white sugar, soda water, lemon juice, and curaçao.
Stir gently until the sugar dissolves.
Add the sliced lemon and borage sprigs.
Serve over plenty of ice.

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.

Lemon + boragetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together102 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Champagne + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Champagne + boragetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together18 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + boragetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together129 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 drink's flavour and aroma.
White sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon and the dry wine.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and lifts the aroma.
Curaçao: Adds orange-flavoured sweetness and aroma that complements the wine.