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Dessert

Plum Catsup

A preserved plum sauce made by boiling plums with water, sugar, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the plums in ½ pint of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  3. Combine the plums with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and salt.

  4. Boil the mixture for 1 hour.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Plum + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together446 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Plum + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit pulp and most of the body and flavor of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the mixture cooks down, helps thicken it and preserve it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sugar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma.
Cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for 1 hour. The long boil drives off water so the sugar and fruit pulp concentrate and thicken into a ketchup. Because the mixture is sugary and thick, it can scorch on the bottom of the pan if the heat is too high.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, pepper. 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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