Skip to main content
Dessert

Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape sauce made by boiling grapes, extracting juice, and simmering with sugar, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Extract the juice

  1. Boil the grapes until soft.

  2. Press the grapes through a colander to extract the juice.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the grape juice, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Provide the main body and fruity base of the sauce, from their juice and pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture reduces, helps give the sauce its thick body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the overall flavor.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a background heat that gives the sauce a sharp, spicy edge.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit solids concentrate and the sauce thickens. Stopping too early leaves it thin and runny, while the sugar-rich base can scorch on the bottom of the pot if left unattended.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper. 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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesGrape SherbetGrape Sherbet32 recipes