Name: Grape Jam
Ingredients: ripe Concord grapes; ½ quart sugar

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 Jam

Ingredients

ripe Concord grapes
½ quart sugar

Directions

Prepare the grapes

Stem and wash the grapes.
Pop the grapes and place the pulps in a kettle.
Stew until the seeds separate.

Remove the seeds

Press through a colander to remove the seeds.
Return the pulp to the kettle with the skins.

Finish the jam

For every quart of grapes, add ½ quart of sugar.
Finish cooking as you would gooseberry jam.

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 concord grapes: Provide the fruit, pectin and tart flavor that form the jam's body.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks.

“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.