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Cowslip Wine

A fermented wine made with cowslip flowers, citrus, sugar, water, yeast, and brandy.

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 syrup

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

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

Ferment

  1. When the mixture is milk-warm, add the cowslip pips, picked from the stalks and seeds.

  2. Add 3 tablespoons of fresh brewers' yeast for every 9 gallons of wine.

  3. Let it ferment for 3 to 4 days.

Cask and bottle

  1. Transfer everything to a cask with the brandy and let it remain for 2 months.

  2. Bottle it off 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 sweetness and the alcohol that fermentation produces.
Cow-slip pips
Supply the floral flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Brewers' yeast
Drives the fermentation that turns the sugar into alcohol.
Brandy
Adds spirit strength and helps keep the finished wine stable.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to milk-warm before adding the yeast. Yeast works best at moderate warmth. Adding the pips and yeast to a mixture still hot from boiling can kill the yeast and stall fermentation.

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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