Why it works: Grape and currant work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 346 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
Acid Drinks
Ingredients
Directions
Steep the grapes
Peel or wash the grapes.
Pour 1 pint of boiling water over the grapes and cover them.
Let the mixture stand until the water is cold.
Dissolve the jelly
In a separate bowl, pour 1 pint of boiling water over the currant jelly and stir until dissolved.
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.
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Grape + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together346 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Malaga grapes
- Supply the main fruit flavour and juice, which the hot water slowly draws out as it cools.
- Currant jelly
- Adds sweetness and tart fruit flavour once it dissolves in the hot water.
The step that matters
Covering the grapes while the water cools. Covering traps heat and volatile aroma compounds above the liquid, so flavour moves into the water gradually instead of escaping as steam. Leaving the cover off lets much of that aroma drift away.
“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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