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Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape sauce made by boiling grapes in vinegar, then adding sugar 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

Cook the grapes

  1. Boil the grapes in the vinegar until well cooked.

  2. Strain the mixture.

Season and simmer

  1. Add the brown sugar, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, ground allspice, and ground black pepper.

  2. Simmer all together for 1 hour.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 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

Grapes
Provide the fruit base that cooks down and gives the ketchup its body and flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps keep the ketchup stable.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, molasses-like richness.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma that rounds out the spiced flavour.
Ground cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma that gives the sauce its spiced character.
Ground allspice
Adds aromatic warmth that blends the fruit and sweet notes together.

The step that matters

Simmer all together for 1 hour. Long simmering evaporates water so the sugar and vinegar concentrate and the sauce thickens. Stirring and keeping the heat gentle helps prevent the sugars from scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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