Skip to main content
Main

Grape Ketchup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the grapes and vinegar together until the grapes are soft.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Season and cook

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

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, stirring to prevent burning.

Seal

  1. Seal hot in Perfect Seal Jars.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 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 main fruit body and pectin-rich pulp that thickens the ketchup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its sharp tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and depth, and helps thicken the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer while stirring. Sugar-rich sauces scorch easily on the bottom of the pan during a long simmer. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the sugars from burning, which would give a bitter taste.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice, 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