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Drink

Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion petals, water, citrus rinds, ginger, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the petals

  1. Combine dandelion petals and warm water in a tub.

  2. Stir well and cover with a blanket.

  3. Let it stand for 3 days, stirring frequently.

  4. Strain the flowers from the liquid.

Boil and ferment

  1. Boil the liquid for 30 minutes with lemon rind, orange rind, ginger, and sugar.

  2. Add the sugar and lemon slices to the boiling liquid.

  3. Once cool, ferment with yeast on a slice of toast.

  4. After 1-2 days, transfer to a cask.

  5. Bottle after 2 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. 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. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dandelion petals
Provide the main flavour and colour of the wine.
Lump sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and sweetens the finished wine.
Yeast
Converts the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (dandelion, lemon, orange, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against dandelion, lemon, orange, sugar. 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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