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 Juice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Wash the grapes.
Place them in a preserving kettle.
Cover the grapes with water.
Boil for 30 minutes.
Strain the mixture through coarse cheesecloth.
Let the strained juice cool.
Sweeten and bottle
Add the sugar to the cooled juice.
Boil for an additional 20 minutes.
Bottle the juice while it is still boiling hot.
Cork and seal the bottle with sealing wax.
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.
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Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 and most of the flavor and color of the drink.
- White sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the grapes' tartness.
The step that matters
Bottle the juice while it is still boiling hot. Filling the bottle with very hot juice helps drive out air and reduces the chance of spoilage microbes surviving inside, which supports a safe seal.
“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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