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Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from cowslip flowers, sugar, citrus rind, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 with the sugar water.

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

Ferment and finish

  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 add it to the mixture.

  3. Let it stand for 2 nights.

  4. Afterward, transfer to a cask and add the juice of the lemon or orange.

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

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

  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 sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness in the finished wine.
Cowslip flowers
Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Thick yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, adding strength and preserving the wine.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, orange, 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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