Name: Pickled Grapes
Ingredients: ripe grapes; grape leaves; 4 quarts vinegar; 2 to 3 pints white sugar; 1 ounce cinnamon; ½ ounce cassia; ½ ounce cloves

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Pickled Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove all imperfect and broken grapes and divide large bunches.
Place a layer of grape leaves in an earthen jar.

Make and add the pickling liquid

In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices; boil for a few minutes.
Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it over the grapes in the jar.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together116 recipes

Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).
Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together194 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,164 recipes

Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe grapes: Provide the fruit that is pickled and absorbs the sweet, spiced vinegar flavor.
Vinegar: Acts as the preserving liquid and supplies the sharp, acidic bite of the pickle.
White sugar: Balances the vinegar's acidity with sweetness and helps give the pickle its body.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.
Cloves: Adds a strong, warm aromatic flavor to the pickling liquid.

Swap the grape

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Applefits better
Grapethe original

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