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Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion blossoms, citrus, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dandelion Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix dandelion blossoms, lemons, oranges, and sugar together.

  2. Pour boiling water over the mixture and let it stand until lukewarm.

  3. Crumble the yeast cake and add it to the mixture.

  4. Let it all stand for 24 hours.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Strain the mixture and transfer it to a 2-gallon jar.

  2. When fermentation ceases, strain through cheesecloth and bottle.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Dandelion + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dandelion + orangetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  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

Dandelion blossoms
Provide the floral flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and supplies the wine's sweetness and alcohol.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide, driving the fermentation.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the sweetness.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and a touch of acidity and sweetness to the wine.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the water must cool to lukewarm before the yeast cake goes in, or fermentation may never start.

“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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