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Catawba Grape Wine

A fermented wine made from ripe Catawba grapes, sweetened with sugar, and aged in a cask.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Catawba Grape Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Mash ripe grapes to a pulp and let them stand for 24 hours.

  2. Squeeze the mixture through a cloth to extract the juice.

  3. Add 2 pounds of sugar for each gallon of pure juice.

Ferment

  1. Put the juice in a cask and leave the bung out, covering the hole with coarse muslin to allow air in.

  2. Let it stand for 6 weeks or until fermentation ceases.

Age and draw off

  1. Close the mouth of the cask and let the wine stand for several months before drawing it off.

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

Ripe grapes
Provide the juice and natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
White sugar
Feeds the fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide, and adds sweetness to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Leaving the bung out with muslin over the hole. The muslin lets air in and gas out while fermentation runs, so the cask does not build pressure or sour. Sealing it too early can stop fermentation cleanly only after it finishes, so timing matters.

“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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