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To Make Orange-Wine

A fermented beverage made from oranges, yeast, wine, and citrus syrups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

To Make Orange-Wine

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pare the peels of the oranges very thin and place them in a tub.

  2. Boil the liquor and pour it over the orange peels when it is almost cold.

  3. Add 3 tablespoons of good yeast and the juice of all the oranges.

  4. Let it work for 2-3 days, stirring twice a day.

Ferment and age

  1. Transfer to a barrel with 1 quart of mountain wine and 4 ounces of syrup of citron.

  2. Stir well and leave the barrel open until fermentation is complete.

  3. Seal the barrel and let it stand for 6 weeks before bottling.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 peel for aroma and the juice that becomes the body of the wine.
Good yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Powdered sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast ferments, setting the final sweetness and alcohol level.

The step that matters

Leave the barrel open until fermentation is complete. Fermentation produces gas and foam, and sealing the barrel too early can trap pressure or let spoilage organisms gain a foothold. Wait until activity has clearly stopped before sealing it for aging.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, syrup, sugar, egg, lemon. 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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