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 Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice and peel
Peel the oranges very thin.
Press out the juice.
Put the juice and sugar into a cask.
Place the peel in a deep pan and pour a gallon of cold water over it.
Let the peel stand overnight.
Ferment
Pour the water over the sugar and juice in the cask.
Cover the peel with water again and add it to the cask the next day.
Repeat until the cask is full.
Stir the mixture well every day for 2 to 3 weeks until fermentation is complete.
Clear and rest
Draw off the wine.
Remove the lees.
Clean the cask with a dry cloth.
Dissolve the isinglass in a little of the wine and stir it in.
Seal the cask until autumn.
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 pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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
- Seville oranges
- Supply the juice for acidity and the peel for bitter aroma and flavour.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- Isinglass
- Fining agent that gathers suspended particles so the finished wine clears.
The step that matters
Stirring the mixture daily during fermentation. Stirring keeps the yeast in contact with the sugar and releases built-up carbon dioxide, so fermentation proceeds evenly. Stopping early leaves sugar unconverted and the wine sweet and unstable.
“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.
More orange wine recipes
You might also like
Orange Syrup47 recipes
Orange Water Ice28 recipes
Vegetable Soup350 recipes
Raspberry Vinegar214 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.