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Dessert

Frosted Grapes

Grapes coated in egg whites and dusted with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frosted Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pull the grapes apart into clusters of three or four.

  2. Prepare a platter with warm fine granulated sugar.

  3. Whip the egg whites in a shallow bowl.

Frost and dry

  1. Dip the grapes in the egg whites, then lay them on the sugar.

  2. Sift more sugar on top and lay them on sieves to dry.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Grape + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form a thin sticky coating that holds the sugar to the grape skins.
Fine granulated sugar
Forms a crisp, sweet, opaque shell over the coated grapes as they dry.
Grapes
Provide the fresh, juicy centre that the sugar coating surrounds.

The step that matters

Drying the frosted grapes on sieves. Sugar coatings stay crisp only when the egg white dries fully before any moisture softens it. Leaving the grapes too long in a humid spot can make the frosting weep or turn sticky, so they need open air and room to dry on the sieves.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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