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Orange Brandy

A fermented orange-flavored brandy made with Seville orange juice, sugar, and orange peels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Orange Brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar and juice

  1. Rub a few lumps of sugar on 2 or 3 unpeeled oranges and add these lumps to the rest.

  2. Mix the brandy with the strained orange juice, the thinly pared rinds of 6 oranges, and the sugar.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a closely covered jar for about 3 days, stirring 3–4 times daily.

  4. When clear, bottle and cork for a year; it will then be ready for use, but will keep any length of time.

Make the cask infusion

  1. Break up the sugar into small pieces and put it into a dry, sweet 9‑gallon cask placed in a cellar or other storehouse.

  2. Have ready close to the cask two large pans or wooden keelers; into one put the peel of the oranges pared quite thin, and into the other the pulp after the juice has been squeezed from it.

  3. Strain the juice through a piece of double muslin and put it into the cask with the sugar.

  4. Pour about 1½ gallon of cold spring water on both the peels and pulp; let it stand for 24 hours, then strain it into the cask.

  5. Add more water to the peels and pulp when this is done, and repeat the same process every day for a week.

  6. Be careful to apportion the quantity as nearly as possible to the seven days, and stir the contents of the cask each day.

  7. On the third day after the cask is full (that is, the tenth day after the commencement of making), the cask may be securely bunged down.

Bottle and mature

  1. Bottle in 8 or 9 months, and it will be fit for use a year after the time of making.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. 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
Forms the alcoholic base that extracts and preserves the orange flavour.
Seville oranges
Supply the juice and peel oils that give the liqueur its aroma and bitter-citrus flavour.
Sugar (in the method)
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness and acidity of the orange.
Spring water
Draws further flavour from the peels and pulp into the liquid during steeping.

The step that matters

Paring the peel thinly. Thick pith adds bitterness, while the aromatic oils sit in the outer zest, so only the thin coloured layer should be removed.

“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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