Name: Sweet Pickle Plums
Ingredients: 5 pounds sugar; 1 pint vinegar; 7 pounds plums; 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon; 1 teaspoon cloves; 1 teaspoon allspice

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 ↓

Sweet Pickle Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Combine sugar, vinegar, plums, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice in a large pot.
Boil the mixture until the plums are cooked through.
Remove from heat and let cool before serving.

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).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together513 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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

Sugar: Provides sweetness and helps preserve the plums while they cook down into a syrup.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the pickling its tangy flavour and helps keep the plums stable.
Plums: The main fruit, which softens and absorbs the syrup as it cooks.
Ground cinnamon: Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves: Adds a strong, warm aroma to the syrup.
Allspice: Adds a warm, peppery aroma that rounds out the spice blend.

Swap the plum

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

Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Quincefits about as well
Plumthe original

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