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Sauce

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape sauce made by boiling grapes with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Boil the grapes until soft.

  2. Pass the grapes through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

Cook the ketchup

  1. Return the grape mixture to the stove.

  2. Add sugar, vinegar, and spices.

  3. Boil until thickened to your desired consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the fruit base, pulp and main flavour that the ketchup is built on.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture cooks down, helps it thicken.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the flavour.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened to your desired consistency. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit concentrate and the mixture thickens. Stop too early and the ketchup stays runny; cook too long and it becomes stiff once it cools. Check the texture by spooning a little onto a cold plate.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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