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Drink

Champagne or Moselle Cup

A chilled fruit cocktail made with strawberries, pineapple or oranges, sugar, brandy, crushed ice, champagne or moselle, garnished with borage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and champagne 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 or Moselle Cup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the fruit in a cup.

  2. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit.

  3. Add the brandy and bruise the fruit, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  4. Add the crushed ice and pour in the champagne or moselle.

  5. Garnish with borage sprigs and 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. Brandy + champagnetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pineapple + champagnetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Pineapple + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Pineapple + boragetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Champagne + boragetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together18 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Strawberries or raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavor and aroma for the cup.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cup and helps draw juice from the bruised fruit.
Brandy
Adds spirited depth and helps extract flavor from the fruit.
Champagne or moselle
Supplies the bubbly, wine-based body of the drink.

The step that matters

Bruise the fruit with the sugar and brandy. Bruising breaks cell walls so the fruit releases juice and flavor into the liquor. Stirring until the sugar dissolves ensures even sweetness, and the sparkling wine should be added only at the end so its carbonation is preserved.

Swap the borage

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Mintfits about as well
  4. Boragethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pineapple, sugar, brandy, champagne. 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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