Name: Brandy and Soda
Ingredients: 1 wine-glass of brandy; 2 or 3 small lumps of ice; plain soda-water

Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Brandy and Soda

Ingredients

1 wine-glass of brandy
2 or 3 small lumps of ice
plain soda-water

Directions

Add the brandy to a large soda-water glass.
Add 2 or 3 small lumps of ice.
Fill the glass with plain soda-water.

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.

Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,427 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Brandy: Provides the main spirit flavour and alcohol that defines the drink.
Soda water: Adds carbonation and dilutes the brandy for a lighter, fizzy drink.

“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.