Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Orange Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Wash the oranges.
Cut them in half.
Squeeze out the juice, avoiding the oil from the rind.
Let the juice sit in tubs for 8 to 10 hours to allow fibrous matter to be removed.
Sweeten and dilute
Add 5 pounds of sugar to each gallon of juice for sweet wine.
Add 5 pounds of sugar and 1 gallon of water to each gallon of juice for mild, sour wine.
Strain the juice into a barrel.
Ferment and store
Let it stand undisturbed for 3 months.
Create a hole in the bung.
Fit a piece of rubber tubing about 1 foot long, placing the outside end in a vessel of water to allow gas to escape.
When gas production stops, indicated by no air bubbles from the tube, seal the bung tightly.
Let it sit for some time.
Rack it off into bottles or barrels and store in a cool place.
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 + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange and sugar 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
- Oranges
- Provide the juice that forms the base of the wine and its fruity aroma.
- Granulated sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sets the sweetness of the finished wine.
- Water
- Dilutes the juice in the mild, sour version, lowering its concentration of sugar and acid.
The step that matters
Letting the gas escape before sealing the bung. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide. Sealing too early can build pressure in the barrel, while venting until bubbling stops shows fermentation has finished before the bung is sealed tightly.
“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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