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
Mash the grapes and strain them through a cloth.
Place the skins in a tub.
Squeeze the skins, adding just enough water to cover.
Strain the juice obtained into the first portion.
Add 3 pounds of sugar to 1 gallon of the mixture.
Ferment
Let the mixture stand in an open tub covered with a cloth for 3 to 7 days.
Skim off any foam each morning.
Transfer the juice to a cask.
Leave the cask open for 24 hours.
Bung the cask.
Seal the cask with clay to keep air out.
Let the wine remain in the cask until March.
Bottle
Draw the wine off and bottle it.
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 skins that supply the wine's base flavour and fermentable sugars.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The step that matters
Skim off any foam each morning. Foam during open fermentation can harbour spoilage microbes and off-flavours. Removing it daily keeps the surface clean while the wine ferments.
“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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