Name: Invalids' Foods
Ingredients: 1 gallon ripe grapes; 1½ pounds sugar

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 ↓

Invalids' Foods

Ingredients

1 gallon ripe grapes
1½ pounds sugar

Directions

Mash the ripe grapes and strain the juice.
Add 1½ pounds of sugar to the 1 gallon of juice.
Bottle the mixture like fruit after thoroughly heating.

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.

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

Ripe grapes: Provide the juice and the fruit flavor that forms the base of the wine.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to the juice and balances the tartness of the grapes.

“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.