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Wine From Unripe Grapes

A fermented beverage made from mashed unripe grapes, water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Wine From Unripe Grapes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Bruise the grapes in a large tub until every berry is mashed.

  2. Add 4 gallons of cold spring water.

  3. Mix well by hand to separate juice from solids.

  4. Cover the tub.

  5. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  6. Strain through a coarse bag.

  7. Squeeze the fruit dry.

  8. Pour 1 gallon of water over the solid mass to extract remaining juice.

Make the must

  1. In a separate container, add 30 lbs of loaf sugar.

  2. Pour the strained liquid over the sugar.

  3. Add water to make a total of 10 gallons.

  4. Mix until the sugar is dissolved.

  5. Cover the vessel with a board and a blanket.

  6. Let it sit at a moderate temperature for 24 hours or until fermentation begins.

Ferment in the cask

  1. Transfer the mixture into a cask, keeping it full to the bung-hole and slightly inclined to let scum escape.

  2. Loosen the wooden peg near the bung to allow gas to escape.

  3. Repeat loosening until fermentation slows.

  4. Tighten the peg.

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 + sugartop 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

Unripe grapes
Provide the juice and flavour that form the body of the wine.
Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and becomes alcohol, shaping the wine's strength and sweetness.

The step that matters

Loosening the peg during fermentation. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide, and a sealed cask can build pressure or burst. Loosening the peg lets gas escape while keeping air out, and the cask must stay full so the wine is not spoiled by oxidation.

“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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