Name: Sweet Wine
Ingredients: 1 gallon grapes, picked from the stems; 1 quart water; ¾ pound sugar

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 ↓

Sweet Wine

Ingredients

1 gallon grapes, picked from the stems
1 quart water
¾ pound sugar

Directions

Boil the grapes and 1 quart of water together.
Strain the mixture.
Add 1 quart of water and ¾ pound of sugar to the strained liquid.
Boil again.
Seal the mixture.

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.

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: Supply the juice and fruit flavor that forms the base of the wine.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and provides the sugar that fermentation turns into alcohol.

“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.