Skip to main content
Dessert

Grape or Plum Butter

A sweet spread made from grapes or plums and tart apples, cooked with sugar until thickened.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Grape and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Grape or Plum Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook the grapes or plums in a little water until soft.

  2. Press the cooked fruit through a colander or sieve.

Make the butter

  1. In a pot, combine the fruit puree with ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

  3. Add ¼ pint of cooked and mashed tart apples.

  4. Continue boiling until the desired thickness is reached.

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 + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Grapes or plums
Provide the main fruit pulp and flavour that forms the butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cooked fruit thicken into a spreadable butter.
Tart apples
Add natural pectin and acidity that help the butter set and brighten its flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling down to the desired thickness. Fruit butter thickens as water evaporates and sugar concentrates, so stopping too early leaves it runny while over-boiling can scorch the sugars. Check the texture as it cooks.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apple):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesApple CakeApple Cake80 recipesApple MeringueApple Meringue75 recipesDried Apple CakeDried Apple Cake51 recipes