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Grape Wine

A homemade wine made by fermenting grapes with water and sugar, optionally adding rye.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and rye work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Grape Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Wash and pick the grapes from the stems, then pack them in a stone jar.

  2. Cover the grapes with water and let them stand overnight.

  3. Remove the grapes, pound them well, and return them to the jar.

Ferment

  1. Add 1 pound of sugar for each gallon of grapes and let it stand for four days.

  2. Strain the juice into another jar and add 2 pounds of sugar for each gallon of juice.

  3. Let it stand for eight days, skimming and stirring daily.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a barrel and add 1 pint of old rye per gallon if desired.

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 + ryetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + ryetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 drive the fermentation into wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, producing alcohol and carbonation during fermentation.
Old rye
Optional spirit that adds alcohol strength and a grain aroma to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Skimming and stirring daily during the eight-day stand. Skimming removes floating pulp and mold that can spoil the wine, while stirring keeps the sugar and yeast evenly mixed so fermentation proceeds steadily.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rye. 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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