Skip to main content
Dessert

Iced Champagne Sauce

A frozen orange-flavored sauce made with champagne, sugar, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and champagne work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Iced Champagne Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water for 5 minutes.

  2. Pour half of the syrup over the orange rind and juice.

  3. Return the remaining syrup to the fire for 3 minutes.

Make the sauce base

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the whipped egg whites mixed with powdered sugar, beating well while mixing.

  2. Strain into the orange syrup mixture.

  3. When cold, add the champagne and freeze to a sorbet consistency.

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 + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + champagnetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Champagne + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg whites
Whipped, they add foam and lightness, giving the sorbet a softer, airier texture.
Granulated sugar
Dissolved into the syrup, it adds sweetness and helps keep the frozen mixture from freezing hard.
Champagne
Adds wine flavour and acidity, and its alcohol keeps the sorbet softer when frozen.
Orange
Its rind and juice supply the citrus aroma and acidity that define the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup over the egg whites slowly while beating. Hot syrup cooks the egg whites lightly and stabilises the foam. Pouring too fast or without beating can deflate the whites or leave cooked lumps, so the mixture loses its airy texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, champagne, egg. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes