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Cowslip Wine, Superior

A fermented beverage made from cowslips, sugar, lemon juice, water, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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, Superior

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil sugar, lemon juice, water, and egg whites for 30 minutes, skimming frequently.

  2. Ensure the boiling vessel is very clean to avoid ruining the wine.

Steep and ferment

  1. Place cowslips in a dry, sweet tub and pour the boiling mixture over them.

  2. Optionally, add thin rinds of lemons, avoiding any white pith.

  3. Stir with a wooden stick for a few minutes, then add a thin slice of dry toasted bread spread with fresh yeast.

  4. Let the mixture sit in a cool place for 3-4 days.

  5. Strain the liquor, squeezing the flowers to extract all goodness.

  6. Transfer the wine to a cask rinsed with pale brandy.

  7. Bung loosely for a few days until fermentation stops, then bung securely.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the wine after 3 months.

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

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and becomes the alcohol in the finished wine.
Cowslips
Provide the flower aroma and character that define this wine.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Egg whites
Bind impurities that rise during boiling so they can be skimmed off, clarifying the liquor.
Fresh yeast
Starts the fermentation that turns the sugar into alcohol.

The step that matters

Keeping the boiling vessel very clean. Stray residue or contamination can introduce unwanted flavours or microbes that spoil the wine during the long fermentation and storage.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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