Skip to main content
Drink

Oruvge and Lemon Wine of Raisins

A fermented beverage made from sugar, raisins, orange juice and peel, and water.

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

Why it works: Raisin and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,684 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Oruvge and Lemon Wine of Raisins

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the water.

  2. Add the raisins, orange juice, and peel.

Ferment

  1. Allow the mixture to ferment until nearly done.

  2. Add the orange juice when fermentation is nearly complete.

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. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Malaga raisins
Add fruit sweetness and body, and carry natural yeasts that start fermentation.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour.
Seville orange peel
Contributes aromatic oils that give a citrus fragrance.

The step that matters

Adding the orange juice late. Citrus aroma fades during active fermentation as the wine releases gas and volatile compounds, so adding the juice near the end helps keep the flavour fresh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin. 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

Raisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesOrange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipesVegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipes