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Grape Catsup

A sweet and spicy grape sauce made by boiling grapes, sieving, and simmering with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Grape Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the grapes

  1. Boil the grapes until soft.

  2. Pass the grapes through a sieve to remove skins and seeds.

  3. Return the grape mixture to the stove.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add sugar, vinegar, and spices.

  2. Boil until the mixture thickens to your desired consistency.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Grape + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Grapes
Grapes supply the main fruit body and moisture that cook down into the ketchup.
Sugar
Sugar sweetens and, as water evaporates during boiling, thickens the mixture.
Vinegar
Vinegar adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Cloves
Cloves add warm, aromatic spice that flavours the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boiling until thickened. As water evaporates, the sugar and vinegar concentrate, so the ketchup thickens while boiling and firms further as it cools. Stopping too early leaves it thin; boiling too long makes it stiff and overly sweet.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Cherryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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