Skip to main content
Main

Spiced Grapes

A sweet and spicy grape dish simmered with cinnamon, allspice, cloves, sugar, vinegar, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spiced Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Strip the grapes from the stems, popping the fruit into one kettle and placing the skins in another.

  2. Add just enough water to each kettle to prevent scorching and place both over the fire.

  3. Once the seeds loosen from the pulp, press it through a colander and add the pulp to the skins.

Cook

  1. Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook slowly for three to four hours, or until thick.

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. Allspice + clovetop 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. Pepper + clovetop 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 fruit base, with pulp and skins supplying flavour and body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks down, helps the mixture thicken into a rich syrup.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking slowly until thick. Long, gentle cooking lets water evaporate and sugars concentrate, so the mixture thickens. Heat too high risks scorching the sugar and fruit on the bottom of the kettle, which is why the record calls for a little water in each kettle.

Swap the grape

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

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

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes