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Valencia or Orange Wine

A spiced orange and lemon wine made with almonds, spices, sugar, water, milk, and spirit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Valencia or Orange Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Peel the rind of the lemons and sour oranges very thin.

  2. Place half of the rind in a crock with the spirit, sweet almonds, bitter almonds, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, ginger, saffron, and cochineal.

  3. Cover and let it sit for 48 hours.

Make the wine

  1. After 48 hours, squeeze the juice of the lemons and oranges over the sugar and cover it.

  2. Add the juice and sugar mixture to the crock, along with the cold boiled water and boiling milk.

  3. Stir quickly and cover tightly.

  4. Keep in a warm place for 3-4 hours.

  5. Strain the mixture through a large flannel bag suspended between two chairs.

  6. Pour the contents into the bag and keep pouring back until the liquid runs clear.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the liquid as it runs through the bag.

  2. When it runs slowly, add about ⅓ cup of spirit to each bottle.

  3. Rinse the bottles with spirit after washing them with water.

  4. Seal the corks.

  5. Store in a cool place.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  5. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Add richness and a creamy body to the liquid.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the citrus.
New milk
Softens the texture and mellows the sharp citrus and spirit.
Lemons and sour oranges
Supply the citrus acidity and aroma; the rind carries oils into the spirit.
Pure spirit
Extracts flavour from the rind and spices and preserves the liquid.

The step that matters

Straining through the flannel bag. Pouring the liquid back until it runs clear lets the fine particles from the almonds, milk and spices settle into the bag, so the wine comes out bright rather than cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, spirit, almond, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, spirit, almond, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger. 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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