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 juice
Pick ripe grapes from the stems.
Crush the grapes in a tub using a potato masher to extract the juice.
Strain the juice through a bag, pressing out every drop.
Add ½ pound of white sugar for each quart of juice.
Ferment and clarify
Transfer the mixture to a clean jar to ferment.
Cover the jar with cheesecloth to keep out foreign matter.
Let it stand for three to four weeks until fermentation ceases.
Carefully pour off the lees.
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
- Ripe grapes
- Provide the juice and natural sugars that yeast ferments into alcohol.
- White sugar
- Feeds the yeast during fermentation, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide and adding sweetness.
The step that matters
Let it stand until fermentation ceases. Fermentation must finish before the wine is clarified. Stopping early leaves residual sugar that can keep fermenting in the bottle, building pressure and affecting flavour.
“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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