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Cowslip Wine

A fermented wine made from cowslip flowers, lemon rind, sugar, 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: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. 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 a lemon or orange and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Add 3 gallons of cowslip flowers and boil for 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 cooled mixture.

  3. Let it stand for 2 nights.

Finish in the cask

  1. Transfer the mixture to a cask and add the juice of the lemon or orange.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Loaf sugar
Provides the sweetness and the sugar that yeast converts into alcohol.
Cowslip flowers
Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Thick yeast
Starts fermentation, converting the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, stabilising the finished wine and adding warmth.
Lemon or orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool almost completely before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so adding it to a mixture still hot from boiling can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling near room temperature lets the yeast survive and begin working.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, 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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