Name: Excellent Orange Wine
Ingredients: ½ chest of Seville oranges; 18 gallons of water; 3¼ pounds of sugar; 2 bottles of brandy

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 ↓

Excellent Orange Wine

Ingredients

½ chest of Seville oranges
18 gallons of water
3¼ pounds of sugar
2 bottles of brandy

Directions

Prepare the oranges

Pare the rinds of the oranges as thin as possible.
Put two-thirds of the rinds into 6 gallons of water.
Let them soak for 24 hours.
Squeeze the oranges to yield 7 or 8 quarts of juice.
Strain the juice into a pan.
Add the squeezed oranges to another 6 gallons of water.
Wash them well.
Transfer the washed oranges into a third 6 gallons of water.
Let them sit until the next day.

Ferment and age

For each gallon of wine, add 3¼ pounds of sugar and the strained juice to the cask.
Stir the mixture daily until the sugar is fully dissolved.
Let it ferment for 4 to 5 weeks.
Add 2 bottles of brandy.
Stop it down.
Let it age for 12 months before bottling.

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.

Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,706 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,939 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the wine's final sweetness and alcohol level.
Seville oranges: Provide the juice and rind oils that give the wine its citrus flavour and aroma.
Brandy: Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilise the wine during ageing.