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Dessert

Jellied Grapes

A dessert of grapes and rice simmered with sugar and water, served with cream or cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and grape work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 839 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Jellied Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle the rice and sugar among the grapes in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the water over the grapes.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the dish tightly and simmer in a 300°F (150°C) oven for two hours.

  2. Serve with cream as a sauce or cold as a pudding.

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. Rice + grapetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together839 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Its starch absorbs liquid and swells as it cooks, thickening the juices into a soft, spoonable set.
Grapes
They soften and release juice and flavor, forming the body of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the grapes.

The step that matters

Covering the dish tightly and baking slowly. A tight cover traps steam so the liquid stays in the dish while the rice absorbs it and the starch gradually thickens. Too much heat or an uncovered dish can dry the rice or let the juices reduce unevenly.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, 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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