Name: Grape Juice
Ingredients: 20 pounds Concord grapes; 3 quarts water; 3 pounds white sugar

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 ↓

Grape Juice

Ingredients

20 pounds Concord grapes
3 quarts water
3 pounds white sugar

Directions

Prepare the juice

Crush the grapes in a preserving kettle.
Add the water and cook for 20 minutes.
Strain through a thin muslin.

Sweeten and bottle

Add the sugar and return to the fire.
Boil for 10 minutes and bottle 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

Concord grapes: Provide the juice and the characteristic grape flavor and color.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the grape juice.
Water: Helps extract juice from the grapes during the initial cooking.

“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.