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Superlative Orange Wine

A fermented wine made from water, sugar, Seville orange peels, yeast, orange juice, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the liquor

  1. In a large pot, combine 10 gallons of water and 28 pounds of loaf sugar, then boil for 45 minutes, skimming the surface regularly.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the peels of 50 Seville oranges in a tub or large pan.

  3. Once the mixture is nearly cold, spread 3 tablespoons of yeast on a piece of toasted bread and add it to the mixture to start fermentation.

Ferment

  1. After 2-3 days, pour the liquid from the peels into a cask and add 1 gallon of orange juice.

  2. Let it ferment in the cask until bubbling stops.

Finish and bottle

  1. Once fermentation is complete, draw off some wine and add 1 quart of brandy for every 5 gallons of wine.

  2. Bottle the wine or drink it 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, setting the wine's strength and sweetness.
Seville oranges
Supply the peel and juice that give the wine its bitter, aromatic orange flavour.
Yeast
Converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Brandy
Adds alcohol strength and helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when the mixture is nearly cold. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to a warm, tolerable temperature before the yeast is added to start fermentation reliably.

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.

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