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Cowslip Wine

A fermented wine made from cowslip flowers, lemon rind, sugar, and yeast, finished with brandy.

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

Why it works: Bread and brandy work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 976 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Cowslip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 4 pounds of loaf sugar.

  2. Skim off any scum that rises.

  3. Add the rind of a lemon or orange.

  4. Boil with 3 gallons of cowslip flowers for 3 minutes.

Ferment

  1. Transfer the mixture to a tub.

  2. Let the mixture cool almost completely.

  3. Toast a piece of bread.

  4. Spread the toasted bread with thick yeast.

  5. Add the yeast-coated bread to the mixture.

  6. Let it stand for 2 nights.

Bottle

  1. When ready to bottle, add the juice of the lemon or orange.

  2. Add 2 quarts of brandy for every 10 gallons of wine, 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. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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 ferments into alcohol.
Cowslip flowers
Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Thick yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns the sugar into alcohol.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and fortifies the wine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool almost completely before adding the yeast bread. Yeast is killed by hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool enough that the yeast survives and can start fermenting.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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