Skip to main content
Dessert

Grape Dessert

A sweet grape dessert thickened with cornstarch, flavored with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grape and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,164 recipes. Both carry anethole, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Grape Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the grape dessert

  1. In a saucepan, combine grape juice, water, sugar, and cinnamon.

  2. Heat the mixture until it begins to simmer.

  3. Dissolve cornstarch in a small amount of water, then add to the saucepan.

  4. Stir until the mixture thickens.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream or milk.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,510 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cornstarch
Thickens the juice mixture into a smooth, spoonable consistency as it heats.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the grape juice.
Grape juice
Provides the main flavor and liquid base of the dessert.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch slurry. Cornstarch must be dissolved in cold liquid before it goes into hot mixture, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only when the mixture is heated and stirred, so stirring until it thickens matters.

Swap the grape

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, cream. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesGrape SherbetGrape Sherbet32 recipesGrapefruit MarmaladeGrapefruit Marmalade16 recipes