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
Directions
Extract the juice
Press the grapes through a wine press.
Pour a little boiling water over the pulp and press the juice out.
Mix this juice with the pure juice.
Ferment
Add 3 pounds of sugar for every gallon of juice and mix well.
Set aside to ferment, reserving some juice to top off the jug each morning.
After about six weeks, cork the jug and store until Christmas.
Rack the wine into bottles.
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.
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Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 ferment into wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Topping off the jug each morning. Fermenting juice releases carbon dioxide and foam, and the jug must stay full so air does not reach the wine and encourage spoilage bacteria or vinegar-forming organisms.
“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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