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Dessert

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape-based ketchup made with grape pulp, brown sugar, cider vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Wash and stem the grapes, then place them in a pot with enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Stew the grapes slowly until tender, then rub through a colander to remove seeds and skins.

  3. Measure the pulp and return it to the pot.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add brown sugar, cider vinegar, ground cloves, allspice, cinnamon, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces by half and becomes very thick.

  3. Skim off any foam, remove from heat, and let cool.

Bottle

  1. Bottle and seal the catsup.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Grape pulp
Provides the fruit base, body and natural sweetness that the ketchup is built on.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the reduced mixture through concentration.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the finished ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling down the mixture. The mixture must reduce by half to become thick. Too little boiling leaves it thin and watery, while scorching can occur if it is not stirred near the end, since the sugars darken and burn on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cider, vinegar, clove, allspice, 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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