Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓
Florida Orange Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice and syrup
Wipe the oranges with a wet cloth and peel off the yellow rind very thin.
Squeeze the oranges and strain the juice through a fine sieve. Measure the juice.
For each gallon, combine 3 pounds of sugar, the crushed egg white and shell, and ⅓ gallon of cold water in a pot.
Heat the mixture, stirring every 2 minutes until the egg begins to harden.
Boil the syrup until it looks clear under the froth of egg. Strain the syrup.
Pour the syrup over the orange rind.
Steep and ferment
Let the mixture stand overnight.
Add the orange juice.
Let the mixture stand overnight again.
Strain the mixture.
Transfer the mixture to a tight cask with a small cake of compressed yeast.
Leave the bung out of the cask until fermentation ceases, indicated by the hissing noise. Close the cask.
Age and bottle
Let the wine stand for about 9 months before bottling.
Optionally, add a glass of brandy to each gallon after fermentation ceases.
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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Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,427 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Orange + winetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,046 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,706 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,340 recipes
Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 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
- Oranges
- Supply the juice and aromatic oil from the rind for flavour.
- Granulated sugar
- Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and gives sweetness.
- Egg white and shell
- Clarifies the syrup by coagulating and trapping impurities as it heats.
- Compressed yeast
- Starts fermentation, turning the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Boil the syrup until it looks clear under the froth of egg. Egg white coagulates as the syrup heats, trapping cloudiness and impurities in the froth. Stopping too early leaves the wine hazy; the step needs a gentle, steady heat so the egg lifts cleanly rather than cooking into the liquid.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, wine, brandy):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits better
- Applefits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, wine, 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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