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Pickled Plums

Pickled plums are preserved by repeated boiling in a vinegar and sugar solution with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pickled Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spiced vinegar

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves in a large pot and bring to a boil.

Pour and repeat

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the plums.

  2. Once the mixture is cool, drain off the vinegar.

  3. Reheat the vinegar and pour it over the plums again.

  4. Repeat this process two more times.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
The fruit that is preserved and soaked in the spiced vinegar syrup.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve the fruit.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and flavour to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds warm, pungent aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Reheating the vinegar before each re-pour. Bringing the vinegar back to a boil keeps it hot enough to carry the sugar and spices into the fruit. Letting it cool too much slows this exchange, so the plums take up less of the flavour.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, cinnamon, 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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