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Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from sugar, water, cowslip flowers, lemon, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cowslip Wine

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cowslip Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Boil sugar and water for 1 hour, skimming carefully.

  2. Pour into a tub and let cool.

Ferment

  1. Add cowslip flowers, lemon peel, lemon juice, and ale yeast.

  2. Stir well for 3 days.

  3. Rack into a clean cask with the flowers and brandy.

  4. When fermentation is complete, seal the cask.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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
Feeds the yeast and becomes the alcohol, so it sets the wine's strength and sweetness.
Ale yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Cowslip flowers
Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define this wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma from the peel and juice, balancing the sweetness.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Let the sugar syrup cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cool before the cowslips, lemon and yeast go in. Skimming during the boil removes impurities that can cloud the wine.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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