Name: Grape Jam
Ingredients: grapes; 1 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 ↓

Grape Jam

Ingredients

grapes
1 pound sugar

Directions

Prepare the grapes

Pick the grapes from the stems and wash them. Drain the grapes.
Slip the pulp from the skins, keeping the pulp and skins in separate dishes.

Cook the pulp and skins

Boil the pulp until it easily parts from the seeds.
Strain the pulp through a colander, rinsing the seeds with a little water.
Boil the skins with some water until they are quite tender.

Make the jam

Combine the pulp and skins.
Weigh 1 pound of sugar for every 1 pound of fruit.
Boil for 2 to 3 minutes.
Put the mixture into cups or jars.

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 fruit pulp and skins that give the jam its flavor and body.
Sugar: Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks.

“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.