Name: Unfermented Wine
Ingredients: 20 pounds grapes; 6 pounds sugar; water (enough to make 3 gallons total)

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 ↓

Unfermented Wine

3 gallons total

Ingredients

20 pounds grapes
6 pounds sugar
water (enough to make 3 gallons total)

Directions

Prepare the juice

Wash the grapes.
Boil the grapes.
Crush the grapes until the juice separates.
Strain the juice through a colander.
Strain the juice through a flannel bag.

Make and bottle the wine

Combine the juice with the sugar and enough water to make 3 gallons.
Boil the mixture for 3 minutes.
Bottle the wine while hot.

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.

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 juice and flavor that make up most of the wine.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and body, and balances the tartness of the grape juice.

“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.