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Drink

Orange Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling water, sugar, egg whites, and orange juice, then aging with sliced oranges and lemons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil spring water, loaf sugar, and beaten egg whites for 15 minutes, then skim off any scum.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

Add the fruit

  1. Add the juice of the Seville oranges and lemons.

  2. Pare the 12 oranges and 5 lemons thinly.

  3. Thread the sliced fruit and suspend in the barrel.

Finish and seal

  1. After one month, remove the fruit.

  2. Add 2 pounds of loaf sugar.

  3. Seal the barrel.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and the sugar that ferments into alcohol.
Whites of eggs
Coagulate while heating and gather impurities so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquid.
Seville oranges
Their juice adds sharp acidity and bitter citrus flavor.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity and brightness that balances the sugar.
Oranges
Thinly pared peel gives aroma and citrus oils to the wine.

The step that matters

Skim off the scum after boiling. Egg whites bind impurities as they cook and rise to the surface as scum. Leaving it in can cloud the liquid and add off flavors, so it should be fully removed before cooling.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, lemon):

  1. Orangethe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, lemon. 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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