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Cowslip Wine

A fermented beverage made from cowslip pips, citrus peels, bread crust, sugar, water, 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 liquor

  1. Boil the water with the sugar for 1 hour, skimming off the scum as it rises.

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

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add the lemon peels, orange rind, and cowslip pips to the cask.

  2. Pour the liquor over the ingredients and stir carefully every day for a week.

  3. After a week, add 1 bottle of brandy for every 5 gallons.

  4. Close 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

Sugar
Provides the food for fermentation and becomes the wine's alcohol and sweetness.
Yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns the sugar liquor into wine.
Cowslip pips
Supply the main floral flavour and aroma of the wine.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and mild acidity to balance the sweetness.
Seville orange peel
Adds a bitter citrus aroma that rounds out the flavour.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol level and helps preserve the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling water and sugar. Scum rises to the surface as the liquid heats. Removing it takes out impurities and coagulated material, which keeps the wine clearer and cleaner tasting.

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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