Name: Dandelion Wine
Ingredients: 4 quarts dandelion blossoms; 4 quarts boiling water; rind of 2 oranges; rind of 1 lemon; pulp of 1 lemon; pulp of 2 oranges; 4 pounds white sugar

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

Seal the dandelion blossoms, boiling water, orange rind, and lemon rind together.
Add the lemon and orange pulp, then bring the mixture to a boiling point.
Strain the mixture and add the white sugar.

Ferment and bottle

Leave to ferment, then 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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Dandelion + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together57 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Dandelion + orangetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together31 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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 golden colour of the wine.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast during fermentation to produce alcohol.
Orange rind: Adds aromatic citrus oils that give fragrance and a bright flavour.
Lemon rind: Adds aromatic citrus oils that lift the aroma and freshness.
Lemon pulp: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

“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.