Name: Grape Wine
Ingredients: ripe grapes; 2 to 2.5 pounds white sugar per gallon of juice

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 ↓

Grape Wine

Ingredients

ripe grapes
2 to 2.5 pounds white sugar per gallon of juice

Directions

Prepare the juice

Mash the grapes to break the skins.
Place the mashed grapes in a clean vessel and let them sit for 24 hours.
Press the grapes to extract all the juice.
Add 2 to 2.5 pounds of sugar to each gallon of juice.

Ferment

Transfer the mixture to a keg or barrel.
Cover the bung hole with muslin to allow gas to escape while keeping out dust and insects.
Let it sit undisturbed until cold weather, then seal tightly.

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.

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 sugars that ferment into wine.
White sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness and alcohol.

“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.