Name: Spirit of Orange
Ingredients: 7 pints of brandy; raspings of 6 China oranges; raspings of 8 Seville oranges

Why it works: Brandy and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Spirit of Orange

Ingredients

7 pints of brandy
raspings of 6 China oranges
raspings of 8 Seville oranges

Directions

Combine the brandy with the orange raspings.
Infuse the mixture for 1 month.
Distill the infused mixture together by a small stream.

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.

Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brandy: Acts as the solvent that extracts the oils and aroma from the orange peel.
China orange raspings: Supply the aromatic oils from the peel that flavour the spirit.
Seville orange raspings: Add more bitter, aromatic peel oils to deepen the orange flavour.

“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.