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Dessert

Plum Butter

A sweet, spiced plum preserve made by cooking plums with sugar and spices until thick.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Wash the plums and place them in a preserving kettle with a little water.

  2. Cook the plums until soft.

  3. Rub the pulp through a colander or coarse sieve to separate the skins and pits.

  4. Dip large freestone plums in boiling water until skins crack, then dip them in cold water to slip off skins and remove pits.

Make the butter

  1. If the pulp is very juicy, boil it down to thicken before adding sugar.

  2. For each measure of pulp, add ½ to ¾ measure of sugar.

  3. Cook slowly, stirring frequently, until thickened to your liking.

  4. Add cinnamon, allspice, and cloves to taste after cooking.

Jar and seal

  1. Pack the hot plum butter into hot sterilized jars and cover with hot paraffin, or sterilize as directed for apple butter.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Plums
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and flavor of the butter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the pulp as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Cook slowly, stirring frequently, until thickened. Sugar and pulp can scorch on the bottom of the kettle if heated too fast or left unstirred, giving a burnt taste. Slow cooking with frequent stirring lets moisture evaporate evenly and the butter thicken without sticking.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, 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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