Name: Grape Juice
Ingredients: Ripe Concord grapes; Cold water; Granulated sugar

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 Juice

Ingredients

Ripe Concord grapes
Cold water
Granulated sugar

Directions

Prepare

Wash and pick over the grapes, discarding any that are soft.
Place the grapes in a preserving kettle and add enough cold water to almost cover them.

Extract the juice

Cook slowly, stirring occasionally, until the juice is released.
Drain the mixture through a jelly bag and measure the juice.

Sweeten and bottle

Add 4 ounces of granulated sugar for each quart of juice.
Boil the mixture for 4 minutes.
Bottle and seal the juice.

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.

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

Ripe concord grapes: Provide the juice, which carries the grape flavor and colour of the drink.
Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the grape juice.

“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.