Name: Orange, or Lemon Wine Boiled
Ingredients: ½ chest of oranges (about 9-12 oranges); 20 gallons of water; 56 pounds of loaf sugar; whites and shells of 12 eggs; ¼ pound of hops; juice of the oranges

Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange, or Lemon Wine Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

Boil the sugar, water, and egg whites together for 1 hour until clear, then add the hops.
Add thinly shaved rinds of 2-3 oranges, adjusting for desired bitterness.
Continue boiling for a total of 2 hours.

Prepare the fruit

Remove all peel and white pith from the oranges.
Squeeze out the juice from the oranges.
Pour 1-2 gallons of the hot mixture over the pulp and stir well.
Strain into the rest when cool.
Add the orange juice to the mixture.

Ferment and age

Ferment with yeast.
Refine with isinglass dissolved in 1 quart of brandy.
Age the wine for 1 year in wood.
Age the wine for 1 year in bottles before serving.

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 + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,696 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Egg + hopstop 42% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sugar: Provides sweetness and the fermentable sugar that yeast turns into alcohol.
Egg whites: Set as they heat and trap suspended particles, helping the liquid clear.
Hops: Add bitterness and herbal aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Orange rind: Adds aromatic oils and bitterness from the peel, adjusted to taste.
Orange juice: Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavor to the wine.
Yeast (in the method): Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. The egg white proteins set as they heat and trap suspended particles, so the liquid clears instead of staying cloudy. Stopping before the full hour leaves haze in the finished wine.

Swap the orange

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

Vanillafits better
Lemonfits better
Peachfits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, hops. 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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Orange, or Lemon Wine Boiled