Skip to main content
Drink

Superlative Orange Wine

A fermented wine made from Seville orange peels, egg whites, sugar, and yeast, finished with orange juice and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Superlative Orange Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil water, sugar, and egg whites together for 45 minutes, skimming the surface regularly.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the peels of the oranges in a large tub or pan.

Ferment

  1. Once nearly cold, add the yeast spread on the toasted bread to the mixture to start fermentation.

  2. After 2-3 days, pour the liquid from the peels into a cask and add the orange juice.

  3. Let it ferment until bubbling stops, then draw off some wine and add brandy as needed.

Bottle and mature

  1. Bottle the wine or drink from the cask after 4-5 months.

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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Provides the sugar that yeast converts to alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Seville orange peels
Contribute the bitter aromatic oils and flavour that give the wine its character.
Orange juice
Adds fruit flavour, sugar, and acidity to the wine.
Egg whites
Bind impurities that rise during boiling so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and stabilises the wine, added as needed.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast once the mixture is nearly cold. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the hot syrup must cool nearly to room temperature before it is added. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, bread, brandy, wine. 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