Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Orange Wine
10 gallonsIngredients
Directions
Prepare the fruit
Pare the oranges as thin as possible.
Pour boiling water over the peel and let it sit for 48 hours.
Remove the white part from the oranges and discard it.
Squeeze out the juice and add it to the peel.
Wash the remains and pips of the oranges and add to the mixture.
Ferment
Combine the liquid, peel, juice, sugar, and enough cold water to make 10 gallons in a cask.
Stir thoroughly every day for a week.
Insert a toast dipped in brewer's yeast into the bung-hole.
If fermentation doesn't start in 3 days, add another spoonful of yeast.
Wait for a hissing sound to indicate fermentation has begun.
After 2 weeks, seal the cask and let the wine age for 12 months before bottling.
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.
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the peel, juice and pith-bearing solids that supply aroma, flavour and body.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the sweetness and alcohol the wine develops.
- Brewer's yeast
- Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving fermentation.
The step that matters
Waiting for fermentation to start. Yeast needs time to become active in the sugary mixture. If fermentation does not begin, the extra yeast added after three days helps start it, and the hissing sound confirms that the yeast is converting sugar into carbon dioxide.
“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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