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Dessert

Grapes in Bunches, Wet

A preserved grape dish where grapes are simmered in salted water, then cooked in a sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Grapes in Bunches, Wet

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Remove the seeds from the grapes using a large pin.

  2. In a large preserving pan, combine cold water and coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover the grapes with a sheet of paper and let them simmer in the salted water over low heat for 30 minutes.

  4. Allow the grapes to cool in the water overnight.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Drain the water from the grapes and prepare a thin syrup by boiling sugar and water.

  2. Add the grapes to the boiling syrup and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and place the grapes in an earthen pan, covering them with paper.

  4. The next day, drain the syrup and boil it for 15 minutes.

  5. Repeat the process daily until the syrup thickens and the grapes look well, ensuring there is enough syrup to cover them.

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
Form the main body of the preserve, softening under simmering and syrup cooking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as the syrup thickens, preserves the grapes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the salted water used to simmer the grapes before syrup is added.

The step that matters

Repeated daily syrup boiling. Sugar concentrates as the syrup is drained and reboiled each day, so the syrup must be kept covering the grapes until it thickens. Too little syrup leaves the fruit exposed and poorly preserved.

“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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