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Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion blossoms, citrus juice, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the infusion

  1. Wash the dandelion blossoms well and place them in a jar.

  2. Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over the blossoms and let it stand overnight.

  3. Squeeze out the blossoms and strain the liquid.

Make the wine

  1. Add the juice of 3 oranges and 3 lemons to the strained liquid.

  2. Cook the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Sweeten to taste, then pour back into the jar.

  4. Soak 1 cake of yeast in the mixture and let it stand for 1 week.

  5. 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. 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 blossoms
Provide the floral flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the liquid, turning it into wine.
Sugar
Sweetens the wine and provides the fuel the yeast ferments.
Oranges
Add citrus juice for brightness and acidity.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances sweetness and lifts the flavour.

The step that matters

Soak the yeast for one week. Yeast needs the liquid to be at a suitable temperature and free of residue to ferment cleanly. Adding it before the mixture has cooled and been sweetened can stall fermentation or let off-flavours develop.

“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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