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Dessert

Spiced Grape Jelly

A preserved grape jelly flavored with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Spiced Grape Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the juice

  1. Crush the grapes to extract all the juice and strain it.

  2. Combine equal quantities of grape juice and sugar in a pot.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon of ground cloves and 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon for each quart of juice.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the mixture hard for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from the stove and pour into glasses.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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 + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Grape + sugartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,490 recipes

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

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 forms the body and fruity flavour of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, with the fruit's natural pectin, helps the juice set into a jelly.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and spice flavour to the jelly.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, pungent aroma and spice flavour to the jelly.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture hard for 20 minutes. A hard, sustained boil evaporates water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin so the jelly can set. Boiling too short leaves it runny, while overcooking can darken the sugar and dull the flavour.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, 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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