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Dessert

Grape and Almond Conserve

A preserve made from grape juice, sugar, raisins, and walnuts or almonds, boiled until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Grape and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,427 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Grape and Almond Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove skins from grapes.

  2. Boil the pulp and skins.

  3. Strain through a sieve.

  4. Press the mixture with a potato masher to extract the pulp.

Cook the preserve

  1. Add 3 pounds of sugar and 2 pounds of seeded raisins to the juice.

  2. Boil until thick like marmalade.

  3. Just before removing from heat, stir in the walnuts or almonds.

Store

  1. Pour into jelly glasses for storage.

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. Grape + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Grape + raisintop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together218 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. 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

Grape juice
Forms the liquid base that carries the grape flavour and is cooked down into the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as the mixture boils down, helps it thicken.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness, chewy body and deeper fruit flavour.
English walnuts or almonds
Add crunch and richness, and are stirred in late so they stay crisp.

The step that matters

Boil until thick like marmalade. Sugar thickens as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the preserve runny, while boiling too long can scorch the sugars and make it overly stiff once cooled.

Swap the grape

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, raisin, walnut):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, walnut. 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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