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Dessert

Grape Pie

A fruit pie made from grapes, flour, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Grape Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Remove the skins from the grapes.

  2. Boil the pulp and rub it through a sieve.

Cook and cool

  1. Combine the pulp and sugar with the skins in a pot.

  2. Cook until the skins are tender.

  3. Allow to cool before using.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Grape + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Grape + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,482 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the fruit flavour and the pulp and skins that form the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch swells and sets during cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the grapes.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook until the skins are tender. Grape skins are tough and fibrous. Heat softens their cell walls, so cooking them fully keeps the filling from tasting chewy or gritty.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter. 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.

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