Skip to main content
Drink

Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion flowers steeped in boiling water, sweetened, and fortified with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Dandelion Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Steep dandelion flowers in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid through a cheesecloth bag, pressing hard.

  3. Sweeten the liquid to taste.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Add 1 pint of brandy for every 4 gallons of liquid.

  2. Pour into uncorked bottles and cover the mouths with mosquito netting.

  3. Store in a cool place.

  4. When fermentation ceases, draw off, strain, 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. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  2. Dandelion + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Dandelion + brandytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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 flavor and aroma of the wine.
Sugar
Sweetens the liquid and provides food for the yeast during fermentation.
Brandy
Raises the alcohol content and helps stabilize the finished wine.

The step that matters

Add 1 pint of brandy for every 4 gallons of liquid. The brandy ratio matters because the added alcohol stops fermentation and preserves the wine. Too little may let fermentation continue in the bottle, while the record's ratio is a fixed reference point for the batch.

“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.

You might also like

Vegetable SoupVegetable Soup350 recipesRaspberry VinegarRaspberry Vinegar214 recipesBrown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesBlackberry CordialBlackberry Cordial129 recipes