Name: Grape Wine
Ingredients: 20 pounds of grapes; 6 quarts of boiling soft water; 10 pounds of granulated sugar; 1 ounce citric acid

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

20 pounds of grapes
6 quarts of boiling soft water
10 pounds of granulated sugar
1 ounce citric acid

Directions

Prepare the juice

Crush the grapes thoroughly with your hands.
Strain the juice through a cloth into a jar.

Ferment

Add the boiling water and sugar to the juice, stirring until dissolved.
Cover the jar and let it ferment until bubbling stops.

Bottle

Bottle the wine and seal 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.

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 natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
Granulated sugar: Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Citric acid: Adds tartness that balances sweetness and helps keep the wine stable.

“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.