It wasn’t a dinner outing that I looked forward to, even though the food and company were sure to be pleasurable. A food and drink pairing challenge had been handed down to me and to a wine manabout-town, Mark Oldman. Would we be willing to meet at Fuleen on Division Street to wash down Peking duck and Hong Kong-style seafood with nothing but cognac? We were assured by a representative of the cognac makers who issued the invitation that we might be surprised at the synergies between Oriental cuisine and Occidental libation.

The aromas of cognac, hinting at peatiness, flowers, even celery, have always attracted me. The problem comes when I take that first sip. Unlike its mellower “cousin,” Armagnac, cognac inevitably shoots a laser beam of alcoholic heat down my throat that knifes southward like an elegant version of Drano. I’ve been known to pour a splash of it into my morning coffee (Sundays only!), a trick learned in cognac country in western France. That may not be the most respectful way to treat the world’s most prestigious brandy, but it buffers the burn and elevates that cup of Joe.

As for Chinese food, it’s hard enough to match, let alone marry, a wine to its myriad flavors and textures. Off-dry gewürztraminer or riesling is often recommended. Even better is a fresh fruited, creamytextured albariño from northwest Spain. I’ve noticed that the beverage of choice for adults at Chinese restaurants is often whiskey or cognac. But it wasn’t a choice I ever expected to make until that evening at Fuleen.

Several children at the next table, who were nursing coconut-flavored soft drinks in plastic bottles, watched wide-eyed as the cognac representative, Jean-Louis Carbonnier, removed six bottles from a black satchel and placed them on our table. No doubt the children thought that we were planning to drink down, not merely sample, all those bottles before meal’s end. If that were the case, I’d have called 911 in advance and told them not to forget to bring the stretcher.

As Mr. Carbonnier opened the bottles, he explained that modern cognac was born a couple of centuries ago out of the inability of the region’s growers to make wine that could compete in quality with that of Bordeaux, a few hours to the south. Their grape varieties, primarily ugni blanc, weren’t much to taste as wine. But once the locals had double-distilled these same grapes into a fiery brandy, and then mellowed it for a couple of years in oak casks, they had something special. The Dutch, in particular, popularized cognac in the 18th century, believing that they were buying the “soul” of wine. A fiery soul, at that, as the first sip of a Hennessy cognac reminded me: It even threatened to overwhelm the strong-flavored Peking duck served at Fuleen in puffy little buns rather than in pancakes. This experiment was not going to be fun, I promptly decided, but that judgment proved to be premature.

“Let’s cut the cognac with about 20% cold water,” Mr. Carbonnier said after our first few sips. That washed away most of the burn, and the brandy began to make a cautious truce with the Peking duck. It sliced through the fattiness of the lacquered duck skin and its layer of fat beneath, and “cleaned up” the dark, sweet funkiness of the duck sauce. “I can see where a brown spirit and a brown bird make good bedmates,” Mr. Oldman said. “It’s the brown congruence.”

Diluted a bit more, the next cognac, from Martell, behaved well with a platter of fillets of giant clam meat. While we chewed, our waiter netted a sea bass from one of Fuleen’s window tanks and tossed it into a bucket where it thumped loudly on the way to the kitchen. We next saw it elegantly steamed with ginger and scallions.

“Now let’s add some ice to the cognac,” Mr. Carbonnier said, as our waiter carved the fish. For this dish, we added ice to the high-end Hine Triomphe Cognac ($270 at Park Avenue Liquors), which despite its long aging had a citrus lift. By mixing it with both water and ice, I didn’t feel I’d betrayed the long-aged Hine. Its essence came through, and it provided a cleansing balance to the fish. “We may be icing this luxury cognac like a white zinfandel in Peoria,” Mr. Oldman said,”but the ice sure does take the cognac from a hot zone into a savor zone.”

The orange wedges that were served at the end of the meal were meant to cleanse the mouth, but the cognac had already done that job. The afterglow of that Hine Triomphe was my companion as I left Fuleen. Although I’d just consumed more cognac that ever before, I noticed that my step was light and steady. I don’t know if I could have said the same after a couple of glasses of riesling, gewürztraminer, or albariño.