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Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from cowslip flowers, sugar, citrus juice, yeast, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 for 1 hour, removing the scum as it rises.

  2. Cut the rind from the lemons and orange, and squeeze the juice of 4 lemons.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the lemon and orange juice.

Ferment

  1. When cooled to lukewarm, add the cowslip flowers picked from the stalks and seeds, and the yeast.

  2. Let it ferment for 3 to 4 days.

Age and bottle

  1. Put the mixture in a cask with the brandy and let it remain for 2 months.

  2. After 2 months, bottle the wine.

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

Cowslip heads
Provide the floral aroma and flavour that define the wine.
Lump sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness in the finished wine.
Lemons
Add acidity and brightness that balance the sugar.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and adds warmth to the finished wine.
River's yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

The step that matters

Cooling the syrup to lukewarm before adding the flowers and yeast. Boiling hot liquid would scald the yeast and damage the delicate cowslip aroma, stopping fermentation before it starts. Yeast works best at lukewarm temperatures, so the mixture must be cooled first.

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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