Name: Orange Gin
Ingredients: 1 gallon strong gin; rinds of 18 Seville oranges, pared very thin; 16 grains saccharin

Why it works: Gin and orange work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 158 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Orange Gin

Ingredients

1 gallon strong gin
rinds of 18 Seville oranges, pared very thin
16 grains saccharin

Directions

Combine the gin and orange rinds in a stone jar or bottle.
Seal the container tightly and let it sit for a month.
After a month, bottle the mixture for use.

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.

Gin + orangetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together158 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Orange rinds: Supply the aromatic oils that flavour the gin as it steeps.
Gin: Acts as the solvent that extracts flavour and aroma from the orange rinds.
Saccharin: Adds sweetness to balance the bitter notes of the orange peel.

“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.