Skip to main content
Drink

Dandelion Tonic

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
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Tonic

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tonic

  1. Boil dandelion flowers, water, orange rind, and lemon rind for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add sugar.

  3. When lukewarm, stir in the yeast.

  4. Slice the oranges and add them to the mixture.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let it stand in an open vessel for 3 to 4 days.

  2. Strain again, then bottle and 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

Yellow dandelion flowers
Provides the main flavour and the botanical base of the tonic.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and gives the tonic its sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing gas and a light, lively character.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and acidity to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must have cooled enough before adding it. If it is still hot, fermentation may fail to 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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes