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Orange or Lemon Wine Boiled

A boiled wine made with oranges or lemons, sugar, egg whites, hops, yeast, and brandy, aged for two years.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,706 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange or Lemon Wine Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the base

  1. Boil sugar, water, and egg whites together for 1 hour until clear.

  2. Add hops and thinly shaved rinds of the fruit, adjusting for desired bitterness.

  3. Continue boiling for a total of 2 hours.

Add the fruit

  1. Remove all peel and white pith from the fruit and squeeze out the juice.

  2. Pour 1 to 2 gallons of the hot mixture over the pulp, stir well, and strain into the rest when cool.

  3. Add the juice to the mixture.

Ferment and age

  1. Ferment with yeast and refine with isinglass dissolved in brandy.

  2. Age the wine for 1 year in wood and 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.

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

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

  2. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 converts into alcohol.
Egg whites
Coagulate as they heat, trapping impurities so the boiled liquid clears.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the wine.
Oranges
Contribute acidity and aroma from the juice and fragrant oils in the rind.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Add hops and rinds, adjusting for desired bitterness. Hops and citrus peel contain bitter compounds that intensify with longer boiling and higher amounts. Adding too much makes the wine harsh and hard to correct later, so taste as you go.

Swap the orange

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

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

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