Name: Orange Wine
Ingredients: 12 Seville oranges; 3 quarts boiling water; 2 pounds sugar; 1 bottle rum

Why it works: Orange and rum work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 801 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Wine

Ingredients

12 Seville oranges
3 quarts boiling water
2 pounds sugar
1 bottle rum

Directions

Prepare the juice

Peel the rind of the oranges and press the pulp and juice through a fine sieve.
In a week, pour the boiling water over the orange mixture.

Ferment

Strain the mixture first through a sieve, then through flannel.
Pour the strained liquid into a gallon jar.
Add the sugar and rum, then let it ferment for a month.

Bottle

After a month, seal the jar and bottle the wine in six months.

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.

Orange + rumtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together801 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,908 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 acidity, citrus flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and produces alcohol, and sweetens the wine.
Rum: Adds alcohol that helps preserve the wine and adds warmth to its flavour.