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Grape Wine

A homemade wine made by fermenting grape juice with sugar and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry 3-methylbutanol, which smells malty, whiskey. The science ↓

Grape Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Squeeze the grapes using your hands in a fine sieve to avoid crushing the stones.

  2. Soak the pulp in water until you have enough to fill the cask.

Make the sugar solution

  1. Dissolve 3 pounds of sugar in boiling water, then let it cool.

Combine and ferment

  1. Add the cooled sugar solution to the cask with the grape juice.

  2. Fill the cask with the water used to soak the pulp.

  3. Add ½ ounce of small-cut bitter almonds for each gallon of wine.

  4. Allow fermentation to occur, then proceed with brandy and papering as needed.

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 + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  2. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + grapetop 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

Loaf sugar
Provides sweetness and feeds the fermentation that turns the juice into alcohol.
Grape juice
Supplies the fruit sugars and flavor that the wine is built from.
Bitter almonds
Add a distinct aroma and flavor to the finished wine.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

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

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