Name: Champagne Cobbler
Ingredients: 1 teaspoon of sugar; 1 piece of orange peel; 1 piece of lemon peel; shaved ice; champagne or sparkling wine; berries in season for garnish

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 Cobbler

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a tumbler one-third full with shaved ice.
Add the sugar and the pieces of orange and lemon peel.
Fill the tumbler to the top with champagne or sparkling wine.
Garnish with berries in season.
Serve with straws.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + champagnetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together260 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 or sparkling wine: Provides the bubbles and the main liquid body of the drink.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the citrus peel and 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.