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Champagne Cup

A chilled cocktail of Champagne, brandy, Curacao, Maraschino, orange, lemon, and club soda served over ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place a large piece of ice in a punch bowl.

  2. Add the Champagne, brandy, Curacao, Maraschino, sliced orange, and sliced lemon, then stir well together.

  3. Add club soda or syphon and fresh mint.

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

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

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

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

  3. Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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 most of the liquid volume of the punch.
Brandy
Adds alcoholic strength and a warm, rich backbone to the punch.
Curacao
Contributes orange-flavoured sweetness and aroma that complements the citrus fruit.
Maraschino
Adds sweetness and a subtle cherry-almond aroma to the blend.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Peppermintfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, brandy, orange, lemon. 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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