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Drink

Champagne Cup

A sparkling drink made with Champagne, brandy or curaçao, caster sugar, soda water, ice, and garnished with 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. Pour the Champagne into a bowl.

  2. Stir in the brandy or curaçao, caster sugar, and soda water.

  3. Add ice cubes to float on top.

  4. Garnish with a sprig of green borage.

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 sparkling wine base and most of the liquid volume in the drink.
Brandy or curaçao
Adds spirit strength and aromatic flavour to the drink.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the acidity of the wine.
Soda water
Adds extra carbonation and dilutes the drink to a lighter strength.

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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