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Dessert

Wild Grapes

A preserve made by packing fresh wild grapes in jars and covering them with a thick syrup of sugar and water.

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 ↓

Wild Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the grapes from the stems and wash the grapes.

  2. Pack the grapes in glass jars.

  3. Cover the grapes with thick syrup made from 2 pounds of sugar dissolved in 1 quart of water.

  4. Place the rubber and cap on the jars, but do not tighten the rubber and cap.

Sterilize and seal

  1. Sterilize the jars according to your method: 20 minutes in a water bath, 15 minutes at 214°F in a water seal, 12 minutes at 5 pounds steam pressure, or 8 minutes at 15 pounds steam pressure.

  2. Remove the jars.

  3. Tighten the covers.

  4. Invert the jars to cool and test the seal.

  5. Wrap the jars with paper to prevent bleaching.

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

Fresh wild grapes
Provide the fruit that forms the body and flavor of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and helps preserve it by binding water in the syrup.

The step that matters

Sterilize the jars. Sterilizing time depends on the method chosen, and too little heat can leave microbes alive, risking spoilage. Follow the time that matches your method exactly so the jars stay safely preserved.

“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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