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Dessert

Grape Sweetmeats

A confection made by stewing grapes with sugar and preserving them in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,490 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Grape Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Remove grapes from stems and pop the pulps from the skins using your thumbs and forefingers.

  2. Place the pulp in a porcelain kettle and stew gently until the seeds loosen.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Weigh the pulp and skins together.

Cook and sweeten

  1. In the kettle, cover the skins and juice, and cook slowly until the skins are tender.

  2. While still boiling, add the sugar and move the kettle back to avoid boiling again.

  3. Keep the mixture very hot for 15 minutes, ensuring the sugar dissolves completely.

  4. Pour the fruit into cans and quickly screw down the covers.

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. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 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

Grapes
Provide the fruit flavor and the pulp and skins that form the sweetmeat's body.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the mixture and, when dissolved and cooked, thickens it into a preserve.

The step that matters

Dissolving the sugar while the mixture is very hot. Sugar must dissolve fully in the hot fruit so it does not crystallize later. Keeping the mixture just below a boil avoids scorching and helps the sugar blend evenly before canning.

“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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