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Dessert

Plum Chutney

A preserved plum chutney made with sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Chutney

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cook the plums in the vinegar and water mixture until they can be pressed through a sieve.

  2. Add the sugar, ground mace, allspice, cloves, ground cinnamon, salt, and grated lemon rind.

  3. Simmer until thick like ketchup.

  4. Store in a stone crock or seal in fruit jars.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 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. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums (damsons)
Provide the fruit base, which breaks down into a pulp that thickens the chutney.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during simmering, helps thicken the chutney.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the chutney.
Lemon rind
Adds bright citrus aroma and a little acidity to the spiced fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer until thick like ketchup. Pectin in the plums and sugar concentration set the texture as water evaporates. Stopping too early leaves the chutney runny, while overcooking can make it stick and scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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