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Orange Ralafia

A liqueur made from Seville oranges, peach kernels, spirit, currant juice, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 385 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Orange Ralafia

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the outer rind of the oranges, avoiding the white skin.

  2. Slice the peach kernels.

  3. Infuse the sliced kernels in the spirit for a week.

  4. Press out the juice from the oranges or currants.

Make the liqueur

  1. Dissolve the powdered sugar in the juice.

  2. Combine the juice with the infused spirit.

  3. Let the mixture stand for two months.

Clarify and bottle

  1. Pour off the clear liquid.

  2. Filter the remainder.

  3. Combine the filtered liquid 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 + peachtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together385 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Orange + spirittop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  3. Peach + spirittop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together33 recipes

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

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. 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

Peach kernels
Infused into the spirit to give the liqueur a distinct nutty, almond-like aroma.
Rectified spirit or brandy
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the flavours and preserves the liqueur.
Orange or white currant juice
Provides the liquid body and fruit acidity that balances the sweetness.
Powdered white sugar
Dissolves into the juice to add sweetness and body to the finished liqueur.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for two months. Standing lets the spirit and juice blend and lets solids settle, so the liquid clears and the flavours mellow. Bottling early leaves a cloudy, harsher liqueur.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

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