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 Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Extract the juice
Bruise the grapes and let them stand for a week without stirring.
Pour off the liquid and strain it through a jelly bag.
Sweeten and ferment
To every gallon of wine, add 3 lbs of sugar.
Transfer the mixture into a crock or cask, but do not cork it until it stops hissing.
Use the pulp
Empty the contents of the jelly bag into a preserving kettle, add 1 quart of water, and scald over the fire.
Strain the mixture and add it to the liquid.
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
- Grapes
- Supply the juice and natural sugars that the fermentation turns into wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide gas.
The step that matters
Do not cork the crock or cask until it stops hissing. Hissing means fermentation is still releasing carbon dioxide. A sealed vessel can build enough pressure to burst or blow out the cork, so the gas must be allowed to escape first.
“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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