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Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion flowers, water, citrus rinds, sugar, yeast, and sliced oranges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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

  1. Boil dandelion flowers and water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add the grated rinds.

  3. Add the sugar and let it cool until lukewarm.

  4. Stir in the yeast and sliced oranges.

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

  6. Bottle the wine but do not cork tightly.

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. Orange + lemontop 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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Lemon and sugar 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 flowers
Provide the main flavour and colour of the wine.
Granulated sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol, starting the wine's fermentation.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and acidity to the wine.

The step that matters

Bottle the wine but do not cork tightly. Fermentation keeps releasing carbon dioxide gas, so a tight cork can build pressure and burst the bottle. Leaving it loose lets gas escape while the wine finishes fermenting.

“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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