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Grape Juice

A method for producing grape juice from Concord grapes, including pressing, heating, and bottling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Select Concord grapes.

  2. Crush them between corrugated rollers, avoiding crushing the seeds.

  3. Press the crushed grapes to extract the juice.

  4. Heat the juice in a kettle to 190°F (88°C).

  5. Immediately fill sterilized 5-gallon glass demijohns with the juice.

  6. Cork them.

  7. Place them on racks in a dark cellar.

  8. Cover the cork with a circle of raw cotton.

  9. Cover with a smaller circle of pure tin foil.

  10. Force the cork in until the foil is below the lip of the demijohn.

Clarify and bottle

  1. When sediment settles, siphon off the clear liquid into a kettle.

  2. Add sugar and water if desired.

  3. Heat slowly to 180°F (82°C).

  4. Bottle the juice.

  5. Sterilize half-pints for 45 minutes, pints for 60 minutes, and quarts for 75 minutes at 190°F (88°C).

  6. Heat the remaining sediment to 190°F (88°C).

  7. Fill the demijohns again.

  8. Cork them as before.

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

Concord grapes
Provide the juice, with their natural sugars, acids and colour, which form the whole drink.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the grapes' tartness, if used.

The step that matters

Heat the juice to 190°F (88°C) before filling the demijohns. Heating pasteurizes the juice and inactivates spoilage microbes and enzymes, so filling it hot into sterilized vessels helps it keep. Filling it cool or letting it sit before corking raises the risk of fermentation or mould.

“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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