Why it works: Orange and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,068 recipes. Both carry pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓
Orange or Lemon Wine Without Boiling
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the rinds
Shave the rinds of 12 to 24 oranges, depending on desired bitterness.
Pour boiling water over the rinds and let it stand for 12 hours.
Strain the mixture into a cask and add the sugar.
Make the juice and pulp
Remove all peel and white pith from the oranges and squeeze the juice through a fine sieve.
Add the juice to the cask with the sugar.
Wash the sieve and pulp with cold water, soaking the pulp for 24 hours.
Strain the soaked pulp and add the liquid to the cask, stirring continuously.
Repeat soaking and straining until the cask is full, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
Ferment and age
Leave the mixture to ferment, stirring occasionally.
When fermentation subsides, add honey and brandy, then seal with brown paper.
Let the wine age in the cask for one year 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 + honeytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,068 recipes
Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,706 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Honey + brandytop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together169 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (sweet).
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the juice, pulp and rinds that supply the wine's flavour and bitterness.
- Lisbon sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the wine's sweetness and body.
- Honey
- Adds extra sweetness and a rounder flavour once fermentation has slowed.
- Brandy
- Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilise the wine after fermentation.
The step that matters
Adding honey and brandy after fermentation subsides. Adding spirit while the yeast is still active would halt fermentation early and leave the wine sweeter and less stable. Waiting until fermentation slows lets the yeast finish converting sugar, so the added brandy and honey settle the final sweetness and alcohol level.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, honey, brandy):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Apricotfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, honey, 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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