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Dandelion Flower Wine

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Flower Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. Boil the water and pour it over the dandelion flowers.

  2. Let it stand for three days, stirring daily.

  3. Strain the mixture and add the sugar and the peels of the lemons and orange.

Boil and ferment

  1. Boil for one hour, then add the pulps of the lemons and orange.

  2. Let it cool, then add the German yeast.

  3. Let it stand for three days, then skim and strain.

  4. Place raisins equally in bottles and pour in the liquid.

  5. Cover the bottles with cloth and let them stand for two to three weeks until fermentation is complete, then cork.

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. 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 floral flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness and alcohol.
German yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Raisins
Add body, sweetness and extra fermentable sugar to the bottles.
Lemons
Add acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Let fermentation finish before corking. Corking too early traps carbon dioxide produced by the yeast, which can build pressure in the bottles and cause them to burst. Waiting until bubbling has stopped lets the fermentation complete first.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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