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Sauce

Plum Catsup

A sweet plum sauce thickened with sugar and spices, seasoned with vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pulp

  1. Press the plum pulp through a colander.

Cook and seal

  1. Weigh the pulp and combine with brown sugar, cider vinegar, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Seal the catsup while it is still boiling hot.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Plum + cidertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Plum pulp
Provides the main fruit body, flavor, and natural pectin that helps the ketchup thicken.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps the mixture thicken as it cooks down.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens. The mixture must reach a full boil and be stirred so it does not scorch on the bottom. Thickening comes from water evaporating and sugar concentrating, so stopping too early leaves it thin and runny.

Swap the plum

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

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

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