Name: Orange-brandy
Ingredients: 4 quarts brandy; 9 Seville oranges; 1¼ pounds loaf sugar; ½ penny-weight essence of lemon; 3 pints water

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-brandy

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the peel

Pare the oranges thin and steep the peel in the brandy in a sealed stone bottle for 12 days.

Make the syrup

Boil the sugar in 3 pints of water for 1 hour, skimming off any foam.
Allow the sugar water to cool, then mix it with the brandy.

Finish and strain

Squeeze the oranges into the mixture and strain it through a filtering bag.
If the mixture is less than 4 quarts, add water to make up the difference.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,706 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Brandy: Serves as the base spirit, carrying orange flavour and providing the liqueur's alcohol content.
Seville oranges: Supply aromatic oils from the peel and juice that flavour the spirit.
Loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness and strength of the brandy.