Skip to main content
Drink

Orange Gin

A gin-based liqueur flavored with Seville orange and lemon rinds and barley sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Orange Gin

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the orange and lemon rinds in a jar.

  2. Add the gin, crushed barley sugar, and strained juice of the fruit.

  3. Cover the jar tightly and let it sit for 2 to 3 weeks, shaking it occasionally.

  4. Strain the liqueur into bottles, cork them securely, and store for use.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + barleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together484 recipes

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

  3. Orange + barleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Gin + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar 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

Gin
Acts as the base spirit and solvent, extracting aroma and flavour from the citrus peel.
Seville orange rind
Supplies the bitter aromatic oils that flavour the gin.
Barley sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness and acidity of the citrus.
Citrus juice
Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavour to the liqueur.

The step that matters

Covering and sitting the jar for 2 to 3 weeks. Alcohol slowly draws oils and flavour out of the peel over time. A tight seal keeps the gin from evaporating, and occasional shaking helps the sugar dissolve and the flavours spread evenly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, gin, barley, sugar):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, gin, barley, 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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes