Skip to main content
Dessert

Grape Jan

A preserved grape confection made by cooking grape pulp with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Jan

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Pulp the grapes.

  2. Put the pulps in a pot over medium heat without adding water.

  3. Once boiling, let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain through a fine colander to remove seeds.

Add sugar and cook

  1. Add the pulps and skins back to the pot with sugar.

  2. Cook for 1 hour, skimming constantly.

Jar

  1. Fill jars, making sure to use rubber seals.

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

Grapes
Provide the fruit flavour and the body of the jam once pulped and cooked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the jam as water evaporates during cooking.

The step that matters

Cook with sugar for 1 hour, skimming constantly. As water evaporates, the sugar and fruit concentrate and thicken into jam. Foam rises to the surface during cooking, and skimming it off keeps the jam clear and free of off-flavours. Stopping too early leaves the jam runny.

“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.

More grape jam recipes

You might also like