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Dessert

Grape and Almond Conserve

A preserve made from grape juice, sugar, raisins, and walnuts or almonds, boiled to marmalade consistency.

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, boil the pulp, and strain to remove the seeds.

Make the preserve

  1. Combine 3 pints of grape juice, 3 pounds of sugar, and 2 pounds of seeded raisins in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens to a marmalade consistency.

  3. Just before removing from heat, stir in 1 pound of broken English walnuts or 1 pound of sliced almonds.

Store

  1. Pour the conserve 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

Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it concentrates, helps it thicken and keep.
Seeded raisins
Add body and concentrated sweetness to the preserve.
Grape juice
Forms the liquid base that cooks down into the preserve.
English walnuts or almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.

The step that matters

Stop the boil at marmalade consistency. Sugar sets the preserve as water evaporates and the mixture concentrates. Boiling too briefly leaves it runny, while overcooking makes it stiff and sticky, so watch for the marmalade texture.

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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