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Drink

Grape Wine

A fermented beverage made from grapes, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash the grapes and strain them through a cloth.

  2. Place the skins in a tub and cover with just enough water.

  3. Strain the juice from the tub back into the first portion.

Ferment

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of the mixture.

  2. Let it stand in an open tub to ferment for 3 to 7 days, skimming off any foam each morning.

  3. Transfer the juice to a cask and leave it open for 24 hours.

Age and bottle

  1. Bung the cask and seal it with clay to keep air out.

  2. Let the wine remain in the cask until March, then draw it off 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. 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 juice and natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Skimming foam during open fermentation. Foam on an open tub can harbour unwanted microbes and spoilage. Removing it each morning keeps the fermenting juice clean while yeast drives the fermentation.

“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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