Name: Cowslip Wine
Ingredients: 2 gallons of water; 24 lb of powdered sugar; rinds of 2 lemons; 4 quarts of cowslip flowers; juice of 2 lemons; lump of sugar for each bottle

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

Boil 2 gallons of water with 24 lb of powdered sugar for half an hour, skimming off the scum.
Pour the mixture into a tub to cool and add the rinds of 2 lemons.

Ferment

Once cool, add 4 quarts of cowslip flowers and the juice of 2 lemons.
Let it stand in the tub for two days, stirring every two to three hours.
Transfer to a barrel and let it stand for a month.

Bottle

Bottle the wine, adding a lump of sugar to each bottle.

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.

Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Powdered sugar: Provides the sweetness and the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Cowslip flowers: Supply the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Lemons: Add acidity and brightness, balancing the sweetness of the wine.

“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.