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Champagne Cup

A chilled champagne cocktail with brandy, soda water, Maraschino liqueur, lemon peel, and optional sugar.

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

Prepare

  1. Chill the champagne and seltzer water in a deep vessel surrounded by ice for 1 hour.

  2. Cover the vessel with a wet woolen cloth.

Make and serve

  1. In a large glass jug, combine the lemon peel, Maraschino, and brandy.

  2. If desired, gradually stir in the castor sugar to avoid overflow.

  3. Pour in the chilled soda water.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Lemon and sugar 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 main sparkling wine base and its bubbly character.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and warmth that balances the wine and fruit.
Seltzer or soda water
Adds further carbonation and dilutes the drink to a lighter, refreshing strength.
Maraschino liqueur
Contributes sweetness and a cherry-like aroma that rounds out the flavour.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oils that brighten the aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Pour in the chilled soda water. Carbonated liquids foam up quickly when poured, so adding the soda water gradually and keeping everything very cold limits loss of fizz and overflow.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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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