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Excellent Cowslip Wine

A fermented wine made from cowslip pips, citrus peels, toasted bread, yeast, sugar, water, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Excellent Cowslip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquor

  1. Boil water and sugar for 30 minutes, skimming off the scum.

  2. Once cool, add the crust of toasted bread dipped in thick yeast.

  3. Let the mixture ferment in a tub for 36 hours.

Infuse and age

  1. Add the lemon and orange peels, and cowslip pips to the cask.

  2. Pour the liquor over the peels and pips, stirring daily for a week.

  3. After a week, add 1 bottle of brandy for every 5 gallons.

  4. Seal the cask and let it stand for 6 weeks before bottling.

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. 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

Lump sugar
Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast converts into alcohol.
Thick yeast
Starts fermentation, turning the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Cowslip pips
Supply the flower flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol level and helps preserve the wine.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy. Brandy is added after the initial fermentation has slowed, so the spirit raises the alcohol content and stops further fermentation. Adding it too early can halt the yeast before the sugar is converted, leaving the wine sweeter and less stable.

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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