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Dandelion Wine

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

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

Steep the flowers

  1. Pour boiling water over dandelion flowers.

  2. Let it stand for three days.

Ferment

  1. Strain the mixture and add sugar, oranges, lemon, raisins, and yeast.

  2. Cover and let it stand for three weeks, stirring occasionally.

Bottle

  1. Strain again and bottle the wine.

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. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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 floral flavour of the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, and sets the sweetness.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide over the long standing period.
Raisins
Add extra sugar and body to the liquid for fermentation.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Bottling before fermentation finishes. While the yeast is still converting sugar, it keeps releasing carbon dioxide. Bottling too early, or sealing the bottles tightly, can build enough pressure to burst them. Let the wine stand until bubbling has clearly slowed before bottling.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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