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Dessert

Spiced Grapes

A preserve of ripe grapes cooked with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Seed the grapes as for jam.

  2. Place the pulp and skins in a large pot with vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, and allspice.

  3. Boil for 1 hour, stirring often to prevent burning.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the fruit, pulp and skins that form the body and flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps it thicken as the mixture cooks down.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the grape flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm spiced aroma and flavor to the grapes.

The step that matters

Stirring during the hour-long boil. Sugar-rich mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of a pot as the water evaporates, and frequent stirring prevents burnt flavor and sticking.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, clove, allspice. 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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