Why it works: Lemon and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Cowslip or Clary Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Make the liquor
Boil sugar, water, and hops together.
Shave the rinds of the lemons or oranges. Add the rinds to the boil for the last 15 minutes.
Squeeze the juice from the lemons or oranges. Add the juice when the mixture cools.
Rinse the pulp in the hot liquor.
Add yeast.
Let it ferment for 2 days.
Ferment in the tun
Put the liquor in a tun.
Keep it filled with wine or new beer until fermentation stops.
Cover the liquor with brown paper.
Let it sit for 4 to 8 months.
Add the flowers and bottle
Gather cowslip flowers on a dry day.
Remove stalks from the flowers.
Dry the flowers on trays.
Add dried flowers to the wine through the bung-hole. Stir the flowers down daily.
Add isinglass.
Cover again with paper.
Bottle the wine after 6 months.
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.
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Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,157 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Hops + winetop 22% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-methylguaiacol (smoky, spicy).
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Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together9,581 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Hops + lemontop 40% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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
- Sugar
- Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts to alcohol, and the sweetness of the wine.
- Hops
- Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
- Lemons or seville oranges
- Rinds add aroma and oils, while juice adds acidity that brightens the wine.
- Cowslip flowers
- Contribute floral aroma and flavour to the finished wine.
- Isinglass
- Fining agent that helps clear the wine by drawing out suspended particles.
The step that matters
Adding the juice only after the mixture cools. Adding acidic juice to near-boiling liquid can drive off its fresh aroma and may affect flavour, so letting the mixture cool first keeps the citrus character bright. Yeast is also sensitive to very hot liquid, which can kill it.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, hops, wine):
- Vanillafits better
- Grapefits better
- Applefits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops, 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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