Skip to main content
Drink

Orange Brandy

A spirit made by steeping orange peels in brandy, sweetened with a sugar syrup clarified with egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Orange and brandy 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 ↓

Orange Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the peels

  1. Steep the peels of the oranges in the brandy for two weeks in a stone bottle.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the water with the sugar for nearly an hour.

  2. Clarify the syrup with the egg white.

  3. Strain the clarified syrup.

  4. Reduce the strained syrup by half.

Combine

  1. When cold, strain the brandy into the syrup.

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 + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

Brandy and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Brandy
Dissolves the orange oils from the peel and provides the spirit base and aroma.
Seville orange peels
Release fragrant, bitter-tinged oils into the brandy, giving the liqueur its citrus aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the liqueur and gives it body once dissolved in the water.
Egg white
Coagulates when heated and traps fine particles, clarifying the syrup so it turns clear.

The step that matters

Clarify the syrup with the egg white. The egg white must be whisked in and heated so it coagulates and traps cloudy particles; if it is not brought up to heat or skimmed off, the syrup stays hazy.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, 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.

More orange brandy recipes

Liqueur 4 See all 20 →

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipes