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Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made with sugar, water, hops, citrus rinds and juice, cowslip flowers, isinglass, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 liquor

  1. Boil the sugar, water, and hops together.

  2. Pour the boiling liquid over the citrus rinds.

  3. Once cool, squeeze the citrus juice over the rinds and add it to the mixture.

Ferment and clarify

  1. Ferment the mixture with yeast and transfer to a cask.

  2. Add the cowslip flowers, stirring until they sink.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass in a little wine and return it to the cask.

  4. Seal the cask tightly after a few days.

Bottle

  1. After six months, the wine will be ready for 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.

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. Hops + lemontop 40% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + hopstop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Provides sweetness and the fuel that yeast turns into alcohol.
Citrus rinds
Add aromatic oils and a bright, slightly bitter citrus flavour.
Citrus juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and supports fermentation.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Isinglass
Acts as a fining agent that helps the wine clear as it settles.

The step that matters

Seal the cask tightly after a few days. Sealing limits contact with air once the initial vigorous fermentation slows, which helps prevent oxidation and spoilage while the wine finishes fermenting and clears.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops. 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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