What is Orange Peel?

Orange peel as a cocktail garnish is a strip of flavedo (the colored outer rind) expressed over the drink so that the oil glands spray a mist of terpenes onto the surface and the glass. The peel may then be dropped in or used to wipe the rim. The contribution is aromatic and slightly bitter, not sweet and not acidic in the way juice is.

This is how a Negroni, Old Fashioned, or Manhattan is finished. Juice is a different ingredient with a different chemistry and should not be substituted for a twist.

Bright orange oil on the nose, with a little pith bitterness if the cut includes too much albedo. The aroma should register before the sip. Oils oxidize on cut fruit; a peel from last week’s garnish tray smells of pith and dust rather than of orange.

Citrus oils as a finishing garnish are 19th-century bar practice, contemporaneous with the bitters-and-sugar whiskey drinks that became the Old Fashioned. The fruit flag — a slice or cherry-and-orange garnish muddled in the glass — is a later restaurant habit and is not required by the structure of those drinks.

Expressing the peel is seasoning; leaving a limp wheel in the glass is decoration.

Cut a strip of peel with as little white pith as practical. Hold it over the drink, colored side down, and squeeze to spray the oils; then drop it in or discard it. Use a fresh orange.

A vegetable peeler or a sharp knife both work; the width of the twist is aesthetic. What matters is intact oil glands and a recent cut.