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Drink

Grape Juice

A juice made by cooking ripe dark grapes in water, straining them, and preserving the liquid by bottling or canning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 grapes

  1. Pick grapes from the stems, discarding any imperfect ones.

  2. Wash the grapes thoroughly and place them in an enameled saucepan with 1 pint of water for every 3 quarts of grapes.

  3. Cook slowly for 30 minutes, or until the grapes burst open.

Extract and sweeten the juice

  1. Drain the juice through a jelly bag, filtering the skins and seeds through a separate bag.

  2. Reheat the juice and add ½ cup of sugar per quart if desired.

  3. Bottle the juice from the skins separately for a less clear product.

Can or bottle and store

  1. Can the juice in jars like fruit or bottle it in sterilized bottles, filling within an inch of the top.

  2. Cork the bottles immediately with solid corks, cut the corks close to the bottle, and seal with sealing wax.

  3. Store in a cool, dark place and avoid unnecessary movement.

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. 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

Grapes
Provide the juice, along with the sugars and flavor that give the drink its character.
Water
Adds liquid to help the grapes soften and release their juice during slow cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the grape juice.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the grapes burst. Slow heating softens the skins and breaks down the fruit so juice releases fully. Boiling hard can scorch the pulp and make the juice taste cooked, and underheating leaves juice trapped in the fruit.

“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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