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Dessert

Plum Relish

A fruit relish made from oranges, lemons, prunes or plums, sugar, raisins, walnuts, and water, cooked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Relish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald and rub the oranges and lemons to remove the bitter taste.

  2. Remove the seeds and grind the fruit using a meat grinder.

  3. Combine the ground fruit with 1 cup of water and cook until tender.

Cook the relish

  1. Add the prunes or plums, sugar, and raisins, and boil for 1½ hours.

  2. Stir in the walnuts and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + plumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Prunes or plums
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness and a soft, jammy texture as they cook down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it thickens with the fruit, helps create a spreadable, preserved texture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pieces that soften during the long simmer.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty, slightly bitter contrast to the sweet fruit.
Oranges and lemons
Contribute acidity and aromatic citrus flavor that balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Long simmer after adding the sugar and fruit. Sugar and fruit boiled for a long time thicken as water evaporates and pectin and sugar concentrate. Scorching is likely on the bottom of the pan, so stir often and keep the heat controlled so the relish sets rather than burns.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, plum, sugar, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, plum, sugar, raisin. 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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