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Drink

Grape Wine

A fermented beverage made from grapes, water, and sugar.

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 Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the must

  1. Mash the grapes.

  2. Strain the grapes through a cloth.

  3. Put the skins in a tub with just enough water to cover them.

  4. Strain the juice obtained into the first portion.

  5. Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of the mixture.

  6. Let the mixture stand in an open tub covered with a cloth for 3 to 7 days.

  7. Skim off what rises every morning.

Ferment in the cask

  1. Transfer the juice to a cask.

  2. Leave the cask open for 24 hours.

  3. Bung the cask.

  4. Seal it with clay to keep air out.

  5. Let the wine remain in the cask until March.

Bottle

  1. Draw the wine off the cask.

  2. Bottle it.

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 and skins that ferment into the wine.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast to produce alcohol and adds sweetness to the wine.

The step that matters

Standing the mixture open in the tub. While the mixture stands open, wild yeasts and bacteria from the air start fermentation. The cloth keeps insects and debris out, and daily skimming removes floating material before it can spoil the wine.

“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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