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Grape Wine

A homemade grape wine made by crushing grapes, adding water and sugar, fermenting, and aging.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the must

  1. Bruise the grapes and combine with water in a large container.

  2. Let the mixture stand for eight days.

  3. After eight days, draw off the liquid.

Sweeten and age

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar to each gallon of water and stir well.

  2. Let it stand overnight before bottling.

  3. For best results, allow the wine to age for three to four months.

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

Delaware grapes
Provide the juice, sugar and flavor that ferment into the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and adds sweetness to the finished wine.

The step that matters

Bruising the grapes and letting the mixture stand. Bruising breaks the skins so juice and yeast can mix with the sugars. Holding the mixture for eight days lets fermentation develop, so it should be kept covered and not rushed.

“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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