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Orange or Lemon Wine Boiled

A boiled wine made from oranges or lemons, sugar, eggs, hops, 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

Make the syrup

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

  2. Add the hops and the thinly shaved rinds of the fruit.

  3. Adjust for desired bitterness.

  4. Continue boiling for a total of 2 hours.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove all peel and white pith from the fruit.

  2. Squeeze out the juice.

  3. Pour 1-2 gallons of the hot mixture over the pulp. Stir well.

  4. Strain into the rest when cool.

Ferment and age

  1. Add the squeezed juice to the mixture.

  2. Work in yeast.

  3. Refine with isinglass dissolved in brandy.

  4. Let the wine age for 1 year in wood and 1 year in bottles before consuming.

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 the sweetness and the alcohol that forms during fermentation.
Egg whites
Bind impurities during boiling so they can be removed, clearing the liquid.
Hops
Add bitterness and help balance the sweetness of the wine.
Oranges
Supply the main fruit flavour, aroma, and juice.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Refine with isinglass dissolved in brandy. Isinglass is a fining agent that gathers suspended particles so they settle out, clearing the wine. Adding it while the wine is still cloudy or too warm can leave haze, so it should be added in the stated way and the wine allowed to settle.

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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