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Dessert

Spiced Plums

A preserved plum dish flavored with sugar, vinegar, allspice, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar in a large pot, then boil the mixture.

Prepare the plums

  1. Skin and pit the plums.

Cook the spiced plums

  1. Return the plums to the pot.

  2. Add the allspice and cloves, then boil until thickened to your liking.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Plum + allspicetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Plum + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as it concentrates in the boiling liquid, helps the syrup thicken.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour of the fruit.
Plums
Form the body of the dish, softening and releasing juices as they cook in the syrup.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the plums and syrup.
Cloves
Add a strong, warm aroma that deepens the spiced character of the dish.

The step that matters

Boiling until thickened. Sugar thickens the syrup as water evaporates and the mixture concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while boiling too long can make it overly stiff or sticky as it cools, so check the texture as it cooks.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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