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Drink

Orange Wine

A fermented beverage made by boiling water and sugar, adding egg whites, orange and lemon juice, and aging fruit in a barrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Combine 6 gallons of spring water and 15 pounds of loaf sugar in a large pot.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and bring the mixture to a boil for 15 minutes, skimming off any scum that rises.

Ferment

  1. Once cooled, stir in the juice of 50 oranges and 5 lemons.

  2. Thinly pare 12 oranges and 5 lemons, thread them, and suspend in the barrel for 1 month.

  3. After a month, remove the fruit and add 2 pounds of loaf sugar, then 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 sustains fermentation into alcohol.
Egg whites
Bind to impurities when boiled, carrying scum to the surface so it can be skimmed off.
Orange juice
Supplies the main fruit flavour, acidity and sugars for fermentation.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling syrup. Egg whites must be boiled into the syrup so impurities coagulate and rise as scum; skimming it off keeps the wine clear and free of off-flavours.

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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