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Sauce

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape condiment made by boiling grapes with vinegar, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the grapes in the vinegar.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve.

Season and thicken

  1. Add the brown sugar, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil until thick.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 pulp, body, and fruity flavor of the ketchup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the ketchup its tang and helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like flavor that balances the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spice blend.
Allspice
Adds a warm, clove-like aroma to the spice blend.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma to the spice blend.

The step that matters

Boil until thick. Cooking down evaporates water and concentrates the sugars and fruit solids, which thickens the sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking can scorch the sugars and make it bitter.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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