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Orange-Raisin Wine

A wine made by steeping raisins and orange peel in water, sweetened with orange juice and sugar, then clarified and bottled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,684 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange-Raisin Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pick and chop the raisins clean.

  2. Pare 10 oranges thinly for preserving.

Make the must

  1. Boil 8 gallons of soft water until reduced by a third, then let it cool slightly.

  2. Pour 5 gallons of hot water over the raisins and orange peel, stir well, and cover.

  3. When cool, let it stand for 5 days, stirring once or twice daily.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve, pressing as dry as possible.

  5. Transfer to a suitable container and add the rinds of the remaining 10 oranges.

Sweeten, clear and bottle

  1. Make a syrup with the juice of 20 oranges and 1 pound of sugar the day before bottling.

  2. Stir the syrup into the mixture, seal it tightly, and let it stand for 2 months to clear.

  3. Bottle the wine; it will keep for 3 years.

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. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Raisins
Provide the sugars and body that ferment into the wine's base flavour.
Seville oranges
Contribute acidity, aroma and flavour from their juice and rinds.
White sugar
Sweetens the syrup and feeds fermentation, adding body to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Pressing the strained raisins. Pressing too hard can push bitter, cloudy solids into the liquid, while pressing too little wastes juice and flavour. Pressing as dry as possible, as the record directs, takes the most liquid from the pulp.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar. 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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