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Drink

Champagne Cup

A chilled cocktail of champagne, sherry, curacao, orange and lemon juice, soda water, cucumber, mint, served over ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and sherry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pitcher, combine the champagne, sherry, white curacao, orange juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Add the Apollinaris and stir gently.

  3. Add the cucumber slice and mint.

  4. Serve over a large piece 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.

  1. Champagne + sherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Orange + minttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together549 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Champagne
Provides bubbles and a light, dry sparkle that lifts the whole drink.
Sherry
Adds dry, nutty depth that balances the sweetness of the curacao.
White curacao
Adds orange-flavoured sweetness and aroma to the cocktail.
Orange juice
Adds fruity sweetness and gentle acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens and balances the sweeter ingredients.

Swap the cucumber

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, sherry, orange, lemon, 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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