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 Wine
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the must
Pick the grapes from the stems, using only the perfect ones.
Mash the grapes thoroughly without crushing the seeds and place them in a wooden vessel.
For each gallon of mashed grapes, add two gallons of water and let them stand for two days.
Strain the mixture and measure the liquid.
Add sugar and ferment
For every gallon of liquid, add 2½ pounds of granulated sugar.
Stir frequently with a wooden spoon until the sugar is dissolved.
Cover with a thin cloth and let stand in a warm place for six weeks.
Rack and bottle
Carefully draw off the wine from the lees, wash and scrub out the vessel.
Return the wine to the vessel, cover as before, and let stand for one month longer.
Finally, bottle and cork the wine.
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
- Perfect grapes
- Provide the sugar, acid and flavour that the wine is built from.
- Granulated sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, which produces alcohol and carbon dioxide.
- Water
- Dilutes the mashed grapes to a liquid that can ferment evenly.
The step that matters
Mash without crushing the seeds. Crushed seeds release bitter tannins and harsh flavours into the must, which fermentation cannot remove and which carry into 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.
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