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 and peel
Peel the oranges very thin and press out the juice.
Put the juice and sugar into a cask.
Place the peel in a deep pan and pour a gallon of cold water over it.
Let it stand overnight.
Pour the water over the sugar and juice in the cask.
Cover the peel with water again and add it to the cask the next day.
Repeat until the cask is full.
Ferment
Stir the mixture daily for 2 to 3 weeks until fermentation begins.
After fermentation (about two months), draw off the wine and remove the lees.
Clarify and age
Clean the cask with a dry cloth and dissolve the isinglass in a little wine, then stir it in.
Seal the cask and let it sit until autumn, ideally starting this process in March.
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
- Seville oranges
- Provide the juice and peel that supply the flavor and aroma of the wine.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides the wine's sweetness and alcohol.
- Isinglass
- A fining agent that helps clear the wine by settling suspended particles.
The step that matters
Stirring during the first weeks of fermentation. Stirring keeps the sugar, juice and yeast evenly mixed and exposes the mixture to air, helping fermentation start steadily instead of stalling or souring.
“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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