Skip to main content
Main

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape ketchup made by boiling grapes with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the grapes

  1. Boil the grapes in the vinegar until soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

Season and thicken

  1. Add the brown sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the fruit base and natural pectin that helps the sauce set.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness and helps keep the sauce stable.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and thickens as the mixture reduces.
Ground cloves
Add warm, pungent aroma and flavor.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, peppery aroma and depth of flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds sweet, woody aroma and warmth.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit pulp concentrate and the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while boiling too long makes it stiff and dense once cooled.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, allspice, cinnamon, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes