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Drink

Xai Tiunx

A sweetened wine drink flavored with orange slices and woodruff.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and red wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Xai Tiunx

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wine

  1. In a large deep jug, combine the light white wine and red wine.

  2. Dissolve enough sugar in the wine to sweeten it to your liking.

  3. Slice the China orange into thick slices without peeling and add to the wine.

  4. Add small bunches of washed and drained woodruff to the jug.

  5. Cover the jug tightly to exclude air and let it sit until the next day.

Serve

  1. Serve to visitors on May Day.

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. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

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

  2. White wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

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

  3. Red wine + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together288 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

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

Sugar and orange 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

Light white wine
Forms the base of the drink and provides its main liquid volume.
Red wine
Adds body, colour and depth to the base wine.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine to the taste of the drinker.
China orange
Adds citrus aroma and a light bitterness from the unpeeled slices.
Woodruff
Infuses the wine with its distinctive sweet, hay-like aroma.

The step that matters

Cover the jug tightly to exclude air. Sealing the jug limits oxidation, which can dull the flavour and freshness of the wine while the herbs and fruit infuse overnight.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, red wine, 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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