Why it works: Grape and wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 819 recipes. Both carry 1-p-menthene-8-thiol, which smells grapefruit. The science ↓
Grape Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Ferment
Combine the water and bruised grapes in a large container and let them sit for a week without stirring.
After a week, draw off the liquid carefully.
Sweeten and cask
Add 3 pounds of loaf sugar for every gallon of wine.
Transfer the mixture to a cask and do not seal it until fermentation has stopped.
For every 10 gallons of wine, add 1 bottle of brandy to help preserve it.
Bottle
Bottle the wine on a clear day in July or August.
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 + winetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together819 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-p-menthene-8-thiol (grapefruit).
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Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,427 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Grape + brandytop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together711 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together11,939 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,490 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Grapes
- Provide the sugar, juice and natural yeasts that drive fermentation into wine.
- Loaf sugar
- Feeds the yeast, so it produces alcohol and adds sweetness to the finished wine.
- Brandy
- Adds alcohol that helps preserve the wine and stops further fermentation.
The step that matters
Leave the cask unsealed until fermentation has stopped. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide. Sealing the cask too early can build pressure and let the wine spoil or burst its container, so it must finish first.
Swap the grape
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, wine):
- Vanillafits better
- Apricotfits about as well
- Applefits about as well
- Grapethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, wine. 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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