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Drink

Grape Wine

A fermented grape beverage made by mashing grapes, adding sugar, and allowing to ferment.

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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Stem the grapes and mash them in a clean tub or crock using a potato masher.

  2. Strain the mixture through a bag to extract as much grape juice as possible.

Ferment

  1. Add 4 pounds of white sugar to each quart of grape juice.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a big jar or clean crock, covering the top with netting.

  3. Allow to ferment for 3 to 4 weeks until still and clear.

Bottle

  1. Bottle the wine, pouring off the lees carefully.

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 yeasts that start the fermentation.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast, which converts it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

The step that matters

Pouring off the lees. The lees are sediment of spent yeast and grape solids at the bottom of the vessel. Disturbing them when bottling can make the wine cloudy and add bitter or yeasty off-flavors, so pour slowly and leave the sediment behind.

“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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