Name: Unfermented Grape-juice
Ingredients: 10 cups Concord grapes; 6 cups water, divided; 2 cups 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 ↓

Unfermented Grape-juice

Ingredients

10 cups Concord grapes
6 cups water, divided
2 cups sugar

Directions

Extract the juice

Mash the grapes and cook them in 3 cups of water.
Strain the mixture.

Second extraction

Add the skins and seeds to 3 more cups of water and cook again.
Strain the mixture again.

Sweeten and bottle

Add the 2 cups of sugar to the strained juice.
Boil for 5 minutes.
Skim off any foam.
Bottle the hot juice in air-tight jars.

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

Concord grapes: Provide the juice, along with the colour and fruity flavour of the finished drink.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the grapes' tartness.

“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.