Cocktails with Orange
Orange is a sweet citrus fruit, giving both juice and aromatic peel in the bar.
How it's used
One orange does three jobs, and they are not interchangeable. The juice sweetens and carries far less acid than lemon: roughly 0.6 to 1.2% against at least 4.5% in lemon. The peel holds the oil that scents a drink. A slice or wedge left in a long or hot drink gives up oil and a little bitterness as it stands. Choose the fruit for the job: a thin-skinned Valencia gives more juice, a medium-thick navel peels into better twists. One fruit yields roughly 70 to 90 ml of juice.
Substitutes for Orange
The closest fruit. A little sweeter, more perfumed, and smaller. Use a wedge and a half for each orange wedge.
About 10 ml of juice and a dash of orange bitters stand in for a wedge or slice. Juice has none of the skin’s oil, though, and in a muddled or hot drink that oil gives most of the aroma.
Bitter oranges
Too sour to eat raw. If one is all you have, use only a strip of its peel for the aroma.
Storage
Oranges keep for weeks, and commercial cold storage runs to about three months, so a bar's oranges rarely spoil before use. Buy unwaxed fruit when the peel is going into drinks.
