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Champagne Cup

A chilled champagne cocktail with orange rind, cucumber, liqueur, soda water, and herb garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and borage share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the rind of the orange very thin and place it in a jug with the sugar and sliced cucumber.

  2. Pour the champagne over the mixture and set it in ice for a little while.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the cucumber and orange rind.

  2. Add the liqueur and soda water, then stir well.

  3. Pour into a bowl and serve with the verbena or borage floating on top.

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. Cucumber + boragetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together44 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Orange + boragetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Champagne + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + cucumbertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 the main wine flavour of the cup.
Liqueur
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the drink.
Seville orange
Its rind contributes bitter aromatic oils that flavour the cup.
Cucumber
Adds a cool, fresh, subtly vegetal aroma.

The step that matters

Pour the champagne over the mixture and set it in ice for a little while. Chilling the champagne slowly over the steeped rind and cucumber lets flavour infuse while carbonation is preserved. Adding the sparkling wine and soda too early, or letting it warm, drives off bubbles and makes the cup flat.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, cucumber, sugar, borage. 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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