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Cowslip Wine

A herbal wine made by fermenting cowslip pips with water, sugar, yeast, citrus peel, and brandy.

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

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 3 lbs of lump sugar for 1 hour, skimming off the scum.

  2. Once cool, add a crust of toasted bread dipped in thick yeast and let it ferment in a tub for 36 hours.

Ferment and age

  1. Add the peels and pips to the cask, then pour the liquor over them.

  2. Stir the mixture daily for 1 week.

  3. For every 5 gallons, add 1 bottle of brandy.

  4. Seal the cask tightly and let it stand for 6 weeks before 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. 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. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 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 the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol, giving the wine its body and strength.
Cowslip pips
Supply the flower flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Yeast
Converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content, helping preserve the wine and stop fermentation.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiled liquor. Boiling the sugar water and skimming off the scum removes impurities that could spoil the wine or cloud its flavour. Letting it cool before adding yeast matters too, since hot liquid would kill the yeast.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, 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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