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Dandelion Wine

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

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the infusion

  1. Pour boiling water over dandelion flowers and let it stand for three days.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar for each quart of liquid, and the rind of the lemon and oranges to a gallon.

Boil and ferment

  1. Boil the liquid with the flowers and rinds for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain out the lemon and oranges, then add the sugar.

  3. When lukewarm, stir in 2 tablespoons of yeast.

  4. Let it sit for 10 days, then strain and bottle.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 flowers
Provide the floral aroma and character that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness and alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Lemon
Adds acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Oranges
Add citrus aroma and a little sweetness and acidity.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must have cooled to lukewarm before adding it. Too hot and fermentation may never 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.

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