Name: Pickled Plums
Ingredients: 7 pounds plums; 4 pounds sugar; 2 ounces stick cinnamon; 2 ounces cloves; 1 quart vinegar; a little mace

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

Layer plums and spices alternately in a jar.
Scald vinegar and sugar together, then pour the mixture over the plums; repeat this process three times.
On the fourth time, scald all ingredients together.
Transfer to glass jars and seal for use.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together513 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Plum + clovetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together446 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums: Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the sweet, spiced vinegar syrup.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the pickle its tang and helps preserve it.
Stick cinnamon: Contributes warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves: Contributes warm, pungent aroma to the syrup.

Swap the mace

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

Allspicefits better
Cardamomfits better
Nutmegfits better
Macethe original

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