Skip to main content
Drink

Dandelion Tonic

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Tonic

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse

  1. Place the dandelion flowers in a jar and pour the boiling water over them.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Make the tonic

  1. Simmer the juice and grated yellow rind of the oranges and lemon with the liquid and blossoms for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and pour it over the sugar.

  3. Let it cool until lukewarm.

  4. Add the yeast and cover the mixture.

  5. Set aside for 8 to 10 days.

Bottle and age

  1. Strain into a jug, cork tightly, and store in a dark closet to age.

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. 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 flowers
Provide the main flavour and aroma of the tonic.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides sweetness that the fermentation turns into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide over the setting-aside period.
Oranges
Add acidity and citrus aroma from the juice and grated rind.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma from the juice and grated rind.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so cooling the mixture to lukewarm first protects its ability to ferment the sugar. Cooling too little can stop fermentation entirely.

“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.

You might also like

Orange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesLemon WheyLemon Whey33 recipesLemon WineLemon Wine31 recipesOrange Water IceOrange Water Ice28 recipes