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Dessert

Grape Syrup

A sweet syrup made by boiling grapes, sugar, and water, then cooling and filtering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Grape Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Pick the grapes from the stems and add 1 pint of water for every 4 pounds of grapes.

  2. Set over moderate heat, covered, until the grapes are well boiled.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve, gently pressing the grapes.

  4. Let the juice cool, cover with a plate, and leave it overnight in a wooden or earthen vessel.

  5. Clear off the sediment.

Make the syrup

  1. For each pint of juice, add 1 pound of broken loaf sugar and 1 pint of water.

  2. Stir the sugar and water mixture while cold until partially dissolved.

  3. Heat the mixture over moderate heat, covered, stirring often until nearly boiling.

  4. Let it boil several times, skimming off any foam.

  5. Pour in the grape juice, cover, and let it nearly boil.

  6. Remove the cover and boil the syrup for 15 minutes, skimming well.

Store

  1. Pour the syrup into a stone jar, adding grated lemon or broken cinnamon if desired, and let it sit for one day.

  2. Strain into bottles, cork, and store in a cool place.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Grape + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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
Provide the juice that becomes the syrup's fruit flavour and body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the syrup and, at high concentration, helps it keep well.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup for 15 minutes while skimming. Boiling thickens the syrup and drives off excess water so it keeps better. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the syrup or encourage spoilage.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against grape, sugar, cinnamon. 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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