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Plum Jelly

A sweet preserve made from wild plums or grapes cooked with brown sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare wild plums or grapes as for grape jelly.

Make the syrup

  1. Tie spices in a bag and boil with vinegar and brown sugar.

  2. Skim mixture well, then add fruit.

  3. Cook until fruit is clear.

Pack and seal

  1. Carefully remove fruit from syrup and place in jar or crock.

  2. Boil syrup until thick, then pour over fruit and seal.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + cassiatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  5. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Wild plums (or grapes)
Provide the fruit that is cooked until clear and packed in the syrup.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as it boils down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the preserve a sharp, tangy balance against the sugar.

The step that matters

Boil syrup until thick, then pour over fruit and seal. Syrup must be boiled down enough to reach a thick, sugar-rich consistency so it preserves the fruit and sets properly when sealed. Pouring over fruit before it thickens leaves a thin liquid that spoils more easily.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

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