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White Grape Fruit Cocktail

A chilled cocktail made with white grapes, powdered sugar, sherry or orange juice, garnished with a brandied cherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 709 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

White Grape Fruit Cocktail

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skins from the white grapes, cut them in half, and remove the seeds.

  2. Chill the grapes and place them in cocktail glasses.

Assemble and serve

  1. Sprinkle the grapes with powdered sugar and drizzle with sherry wine or orange juice.

  2. Top each glass with a brandied cherry.

  3. Mix in pieces of pineapple, orange, or grapefruit if desired.

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 + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together709 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Cherry + pineappletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together537 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Grape + cherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sherry + pineappletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together228 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Grape + sherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together229 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White grapes
Provide the main fruit body and juice, giving the cocktail its base flavor and texture.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves quickly into the grape juice, adding sweetness to balance the wine or juice.
Sherry wine or orange juice
Adds acidity and aroma, lifting the sweetness and flavoring the grapes.

Swap the grape

The recipe marks grape as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, sherry, cherry, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, cherry, pineapple. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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