Name: Scuppernong Wine
Ingredients: 1 bushel of grapes; 5 gallons of water; 3 pounds of sugar per gallon of juice

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 ↓

Scuppernong Wine

Ingredients

1 bushel of grapes
5 gallons of water
3 pounds of sugar per gallon of juice

Directions

Prepare the juice

Combine grapes and water in a large container.
Let the mixture stand for 3 to 4 days.
Strain the mixture to extract the juice.
Add 3 pounds of sugar for each gallon of juice.

Ferment and bottle

Transfer the juice into jugs and cover the tops with muslin.
Once fermentation ceases, strain again.
Bottle and seal.

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.

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

Grapes: Provide the juice, sugar-bearing pulp and natural yeast that drive fermentation.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast to produce alcohol and adds sweetness to the finished 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.