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 ↓
Geape Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the juice
Wash grapes thoroughly.
Press grapes with your hands or run them through a cider press.
Strain the juice through a thin cloth and leave it in an open vessel for 24 hours.
Carefully remove the skins and add 3 pounds of sugar to each gallon of juice, melting the sugar on the stove with just enough water.
Ferment and bottle
Put the mixture in a keg or demijohn and seal tightly.
Insert a quill into the cork and place a siphon over the quill, dropping the other end into a bottle of water.
Do not allow fermentation to occur openly.
After 6 months, bottle the wine.
For dry wine, use only 2 pounds of sugar per gallon of juice.
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, which supplies the sugars and flavour that fermentation turns into wine.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol; the amount also sets the sweetness of the finished wine.
The step that matters
Sealing the fermentation vessel with a siphon airlock. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide, and the water-sealed siphon lets it escape while keeping air out. Open fermentation lets oxygen and spoilage microbes in, which can sour or spoil the wine.
“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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