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Dessert

Grape Ketchup

A sweet and spicy grape preserve made with grapes, spices, vinegar, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Grape Ketchup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the grapes until soft and remove the seeds.

  2. Tie the whole spices in a bag to prevent darkening the product.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add the spices, sugar, salt, and vinegar to the grapes and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Put the mixture into sterilized bottles and seal.

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the main body and fruity flavor of the ketchup once stewed and softened.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it simmers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the ketchup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.
Cloves
Contributes strong, aromatic spice flavor.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Bagging the whole spices. The spices are tied in a bag so they can flavor the mixture without being left loose in it. Their pigments could otherwise darken the product, as the step's own note states.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Grapethe original

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