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Drink

Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, citrus rinds, cowslip pips, brandy, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 wine base

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for 30 minutes, removing all the scum as it rises.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the strained orange and lemon rinds and juice.

  3. When lukewarm, add the cowslip pips or flowers, picked from the stalks and seeds.

  4. Add 3 tablespoons of fresh brewers’ yeast for every gallon of wine.

Ferment and age

  1. Let it ferment for 3 to 4 days.

  2. Combine everything in a cask with the brandy and let it sit for 2 months.

Bottle

  1. After 2 months, bottle it for use.

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 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

Lump sugar
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol, and sweetness.
Brewers’ yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the wine's fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, which helps preserve the wine during aging.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is a living organism, and very hot liquid can kill it. Waiting until the mixture has cooled to lukewarm lets the yeast survive and start fermenting the sugar.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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