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Drink

Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from cowslip flowers, sugar, water, and citrus, aged with yeast and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cowslip Wine

Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Cowslip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 4 pounds of loaf sugar, skimming off any scum that rises.

  2. Add the rind of 1 lemon or orange and boil for 3 minutes with the sugar water.

  3. Add 3 gallons of cowslip flowers and boil for another 3 minutes.

Ferment

  1. Transfer the mixture to a tub and let it cool almost completely.

  2. Toast a piece of bread and spread it with thick yeast, then place it in the mixture.

  3. Let it stand for 2 nights.

Finish in the cask

  1. When ready, transfer to a cask and add the juice of the orange or lemon.

  2. For every 10 gallons of wine, add 2 quarts of brandy, adjusting proportionally for other quantities.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 food the yeast converts into alcohol.
Cowslip flowers
Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Thick yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and strengthens the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool almost completely before adding the yeast bread. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a still-hot syrup can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling to near room temperature lets the yeast survive and begin converting sugar.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, orange, brandy, wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, orange, brandy, wine. 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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