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Drink

Champagne-cup

A chilled beverage made with champagne, soda water, brandy or curaçao, powdered sugar, ice, and green borage.

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. Combine all ingredients in a silver cup.

  2. Stir them together and serve as a claret-cup.

  3. Adjust the sugar to taste if needed.

  4. If borage is unavailable, substitute with a few slices of cucumber rind.

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 + boragetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brandy + boragetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + boragetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together129 recipes

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

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 wine base and the bubbles that give the cup its sparkle.
Soda water
Adds more fizz and dilutes the wine to a lighter, drinkable strength.
Brandy or curaçao
Adds spirit strength and aroma, with curaçao also contributing orange sweetness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the wine's acidity and the spirit's bite.
Pounded ice
Chills the cup and slowly dilutes it as it melts.

The step that matters

Stir them together gently. Carbonation escapes quickly when a fizzy liquid is stirred hard, so the champagne and soda lose sparkle. A brief, gentle stir mixes the sugar and spirit while keeping the cup lively.

Swap the borage

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Boragethe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

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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