Name: Champagne Cup
Ingredients: 1 bottle of champagne; 1 bottle of seltzer water; ⅓ cup of brandy; 1 liqueur glassful of ouragoa; sugar to taste

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

Mix the champagne, seltzer water, brandy, ouragoa, and sugar together well.
Keep the mixture in ice until ready to serve.

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.

Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together169 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Champagne + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together424 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 base and most of the drink's volume and aroma.
Brandy: Adds alcoholic strength and warm, fruity depth to the drink.
Ouragoa: Adds a bittersweet, aromatic flavour that rounds out the spirits.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the alcohol and the dry sparkling wine.

“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.