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Dandelion Wine

A fermented beverage made from dandelion blossoms, citrus, 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

Make the infusion

  1. Pour 1 gallon of boiling water over 1 gallon of dandelion blossoms.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 days.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Add flavourings and ferment

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar, the juice of 1 lemon, and the juice of 3 oranges to each quart of juice.

  2. Boil the liquid with the rinds of the lemon and oranges for 15 minutes.

  3. Add sliced lemon and oranges.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of yeast or ½ cake of compressed yeast.

  5. Let the mixture stand for 1 week.

Finish and bottle

  1. Strain the liquid again.

  2. Settle the liquid.

  3. 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. 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 blossoms
Provide the floral flavour and aroma that define the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and provides sweetness in the finished wine.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol, turning the liquid into wine.
Lemon
Adds acidity and citrus aroma that balance the sweetness.
Oranges
Add citrus juice, sweetness and aroma that round out the flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast. Yeast needs sugar and a suitable temperature to start fermenting. Adding it to a liquid that is still hot, or skipping the boil and sugar step, can stall fermentation, so the wine may fail to develop alcohol.

“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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