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Elderberry and Grape Jelly

A fruit jelly made from grapes, elderberries, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Elderberry and Grape Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove all stems from the grapes and elderberries.

  2. Place the fruit in a saucepan and cook slowly until tender and juicy.

  3. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag to extract all the juice.

Make the jelly

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 pint of granulated sugar.

  2. Boil the sugar and juice together, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Continue boiling until a small amount of jelly cooled in a saucer stiffens.

  4. When partly cool, pour the jelly into molds.

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 + 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

Grapes
Provide the main fruit flavor and natural pectin for the jelly to set.
Elderberries
Add tart, aromatic flavor and additional pectin to help the jelly firm.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps the jelly set and keep its texture.

The step that matters

Boiling until the jelly stiffens. Jelly sets only when enough sugar, pectin and acid are concentrated by boiling. Stopping too early leaves it runny; boiling too long can make it stiff or grainy. Testing a cooled sample on a saucer shows when it is ready.

“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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