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Drink

Cowfiip-mead

A honey wine made with honey, water, lemons, cowstips, yeast, and sweet-brier.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Honey and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,707 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cowfiip-mead

Ingredients

Directions

Make the honey liquid

  1. Boil 30 pounds of honey in 15 gallons of water until 1 gallon evaporates.

  2. Skim the surface and remove from heat.

  3. Cut 16 lemons in half.

  4. Add 1 gallon of the liquid to the lemons.

  5. Place the remaining liquid in a tub with 7 pecks of cowstips.

  6. Let it stand overnight.

Ferment

  1. Combine the lemon-infused liquid with the cowstips.

  2. Add 8 tablespoons of new yeast.

  3. Add a handful of sweet-brier.

  4. Stir well.

  5. Let the mixture work for 3 to 4 days.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Age and bottle

  1. Pour it into a cask.

  2. Let it stand for 6 months 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.

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. Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Honey
Provides the fermentable sugar that the yeast converts into alcohol, giving body and sweetness.
New yeast
Converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.
Lemons
Adds acidity and brightness that balances the sweetness of the honey.

The step that matters

Let the mixture work for 3 to 4 days. The yeast converts sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during this period. Straining and casking before fermentation has finished can leave the drink still active in the cask.

“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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