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Drink

Excellent Orange Wine

A wine made by fermenting Seville orange juice with sugar and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 13 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 ↓

Excellent Orange Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Take half a chest of Seville oranges, pare off the rinds as thin as possible, put two-thirds of them into six gallons of water, and let them remain for twenty-four hours.

  2. Squeeze the oranges (which ought to yield seven or eight quarts of juice) through a sieve into a pan, and as they are done throw them into six gallons more of water; let them be washed well in it with the hands, and then put into another six gallons of water and left until the following day.

Make the wine

  1. For each gallon of wine, put into the cask three pounds and a quarter of loaf sugar, and the liquor strained clear from the rinds and pulp.

  2. Wash these again and again, should more liquor be required to fill the cask; but do not at any time add raw water.

Ferment and age

  1. Stir the wine daily until the sugar is perfectly dissolved, and let it ferment from four to five weeks; add to it two bottles of brandy, stop it down, and in twelve months it will be fit to bottle.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

123Calories
2 gProtein
0 gFat
31 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 5 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Orange1 medium (131g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Waternot in our table0
Brandynot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

Seville oranges
Provide the juice and rinds that give the wine its citrus aroma and acidity.
Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Brandy
Adds alcohol, strengthening the wine and helping it keep.

The step that matters

Do not add raw water. Extra water dilutes the orange flavour and can introduce unwanted microbes. Any topping up should use more of the strained orange liquor, so the wine stays concentrated and clean.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, brandy. 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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