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Grape Preserves

A preserve made from Catawba grape skins and pulp, sweetened with sugar and water, boiled until thick.

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 ↓

Grape Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Remove the skins from the Catawba grapes and measure them.

  2. For every cup of skins, use an equal amount of sugar and water.

  3. Heat half of the sugar in the oven until hot.

  4. In a kettle, combine the other half of the sugar with the water and boil until clear.

Cook the skins and pulp

  1. Add the grape skins a few at a time to maintain boiling.

  2. Cover the pot and avoid stirring to keep the skins plump.

  3. Shake the pot occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. Cook the skins for about 30 minutes.

  5. Cook the grape pulp for 10 minutes to loosen the seeds.

  6. Strain through cheesecloth.

  7. Return the strained pulp to the heat.

  8. Boil and skim off any froth.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the pulp to the skins.

  2. Stir in the hot sugar.

  3. Boil for 1-2 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into glasses like jelly.

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

Catawba grapes
Provide the fruit flavor, pulp, and pectin-rich skins that give the preserves body.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserves and helps them thicken and set as they cook.
Water
Dissolves the sugar into a syrup that carries the skins through gentle cooking.

The step that matters

Cover the pot and avoid stirring while the skins cook. Stirring breaks down the skins and makes them tough or ragged. Keeping the pot covered and still lets the skins stay plump and hold their shape in the syrup.

“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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