Name: Preserved Grapes
Ingredients: fresh ripe grapes; ¾ pound sugar per pound of grapes; water (just enough to dissolve sugar)

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 ↓

Preserved Grapes

Ingredients

fresh ripe grapes
¾ pound sugar per pound of grapes
water (just enough to dissolve sugar)

Directions

Prepare

Select fresh, ripe grapes and remove the stalks.
Weigh the grapes and measure ¾ pound of sugar for each pound of grapes.
Squeeze the pulp from the skins into one bowl and place the skins in another.

Make the preserve

Heat the pulp in a granite pan until it can pass through a sieve, discarding the stones.
Make a syrup by dissolving the sugar in just enough water.
Combine the heated pulp with the syrup and boil for five minutes.

Finish

Let it cool and seal in jars.

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

Fresh ripe grapes: Provide the pulp and flavour that make up the preserve.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by binding water and inhibiting spoilage.

The step that matters

Boil the pulp and syrup for five minutes. Boiling concentrates the sugar and drives off water, which helps the preserve keep and thicken. Too short a boil leaves it runny and more prone to spoiling.

“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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Preserved Grapes