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Dessert

Grape Conserve

A preserve made from grapes, raisins, citrus, walnuts, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Grape Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove seeds from grapes.

  2. Chop the skins of the grapes.

  3. Chop the raisins.

  4. Grate the orange skins.

  5. Cut the orange pulp into fine pieces.

  6. Grate the lemon skins.

  7. Add the lemon juice.

Cook and finish

  1. Cook all ingredients with sugar for 20 minutes or more.

  2. Add chopped nuts just before removing from heat.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Grape + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the main fruit body and flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy body to the preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens flavor and helps set the preserve.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor at the end.

The step that matters

Add chopped nuts just before removing from heat. Nuts added too early over long cooking lose their crunch and can taste stale or bitter. Adding them at the end keeps their texture and fresh flavor in the finished preserve.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (grape, orange, lemon, walnut, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, orange, lemon, walnut, sugar. 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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