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Grape Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Boil the grapes until soft.

  2. Press the grapes through a colander to extract the juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the grape juice, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 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 fruit base and juice that gives the ketchup its main flavour and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the reduced mixture into a spoonable consistency.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spiced flavour profile.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the spiced flavour profile.
Allspice
Adds warm, peppery aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it thickens. Grape juice contains a lot of water, and the ketchup only thickens as that water evaporates while the sugar concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it thin and watery, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and make it bitter or too stiff.

Swap the grape

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

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

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

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