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Champagne Cup

A chilled cocktail made with champagne, Apollinaris water, cognac, fruit juices, lime juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Champagne Cup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the cognac, sugar, and fruit juices in a bottle.

  2. Keep the mixture on ice for three days.

Serve

  1. After three days, mix with the champagne and Apollinaris water before serving.

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 + limetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Champagne + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Orange + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raspberry + limetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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

Cognac
Adds strong spirit flavor and warmth to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the cocktail and balances the acidity of the juices.
Orange juice
Contributes fruity sweetness and acidity to the base.
Lime juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavor.
Raspberry or strawberry juice
Adds fruit flavor, color, and additional acidity.
Champagne
Provides carbonation and a lively, bubbly texture.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture on ice for three days. Holding the cognac and juices cold over several days lets their flavors blend and mellow before the sparkling wine is added. Adding the champagne too early would lose its bubbles, so it is mixed in only at the end.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, orange, raspberry, 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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