Skip to main content
Drink

Orange Bichof

A bitter orange and wine liqueur infused overnight with sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Orange Bichof

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oranges

  1. Cut the oranges into quarters and lightly score the rind with a knife.

  2. Grill the orange pieces over a slow fire.

Infuse and finish

  1. Place the grilled oranges in an earthenware cooking vessel with the wine.

  2. Close the vessel tightly and let it infuse overnight in warm ashes.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the sugar and grated nutmeg.

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. White wine + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

  4. Bitter orange + nutmegtop 40% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bitter orange + sugartop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Bitter oranges
Provide the aromatic oils and bitter flavour that give the liqueur its character.
White wine
Acts as the alcoholic base that extracts and carries the orange flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the oranges and wine.

The step that matters

Close the vessel tightly during infusion. A tight seal keeps the alcohol and aromatic compounds from evaporating, so the wine stays strong and the orange flavour concentrates rather than being lost.

Swap the bitter orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bitter orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sugar, nutmeg. 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

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes