Skip to main content
Drink

Primrose Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, citrus juices, egg whites, toasted bread, primrose pips, and Champagne brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Primrose Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil 181 lb of lump sugar in 6 gallons of water with the juice of 8 lemons, 6 Seville oranges, and the whites of 8 eggs for half an hour.

  2. Skim off the scum.

  3. Add a crust of toasted bread soaked in yeast.

  4. Let the mixture ferment for 36 hours.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the peel of 12 lemons, 10 Seville oranges, and 6 gallons of primrose pips to the mixture.

  2. Pour in the liquor.

  3. Stir the mixture every day for a week.

  4. Add 3 pints of Champagne brandy.

  5. Seal the cask tightly.

  6. Bottle the wine in six weeks.

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.

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. Champagne + brandytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together169 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Orange + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + champagnetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lump sugar
Provides the sweetness and the alcohol that fermentation produces.
Whites of eggs
Coagulate during boiling and carry impurities up as scum, clarifying the liquor.
Toasted bread soaked in yeast
Supplies yeast to start the fermentation.
Primrose pips
Provide the flavour base that the wine is built on.
Champagne brandy
Adds spirit strength and aroma to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skimming off the scum. Egg whites rise with impurities as the liquor boils. Removing this scum before fermentation keeps the wine clear and reduces off-flavours.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Pineapplefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg, bread, champagne, 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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes