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Drink

Florida Orange Wine

A fermented beverage made from orange juice, sugar, egg white, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Florida Orange Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice and syrup

  1. Wipe the oranges with a wet cloth and peel off the yellow rind very thin.

  2. Squeeze the oranges and strain the juice through a fine sieve.

  3. For each gallon of juice, combine 3 pounds of sugar, the crushed egg white and shell, and ⅓ gallon of cold water in a pot.

  4. Heat the mixture, stirring every 2 minutes until the egg begins to harden.

  5. Boil the syrup until it looks clear under the froth of egg.

  6. Strain the syrup and pour it over the orange rind; let it stand overnight.

  7. The next day, add the orange juice and let it stand overnight again.

Ferment and age

  1. Strain it a second time and transfer to a tight cask.

  2. Add a small cake of compressed yeast for about 10 gallons of wine.

  3. Leave the bung out of the cask until fermentation ceases, indicated by the hissing noise.

  4. Once fermentation stops, close the cask with the bung and let the wine stand for about 9 months before bottling.

  5. After bottling, wait 3 months before using. Optionally, add a glass of brandy to each gallon after fermentation.

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

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

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

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

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Oranges
Supply the juice and aromatic oil from the rind that flavour the wine.
Granulated sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness.
Egg white and shell
Coagulates as it heats, collecting impurities so the syrup can be clarified.
Compressed yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until it looks clear under the froth of egg. Heating the egg white makes it coagulate and trap impurities; the syrup must be boiled long enough for this to clear it, otherwise the wine may be cloudy or off-flavoured.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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