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Spiced Pickled Prunes

A preserved prune dish flavored with cloves, cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and vinegar.

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 ↓

Spiced Pickled Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the prunes in water for 24 hours.

Make the pickling syrup

  1. Combine vinegar, sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.

Cook the prunes

  1. Add the soaked prunes to the pot and boil until the syrup is clear and the prunes are tender.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes
Form the main body of the dish and soften into tender fruit during simmering.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit and give it a glossy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the pickled fruit.
Cloves
Contribute a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes a warm, sweet aroma and flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil until the syrup is clear and the prunes are tender. Boiling too briefly leaves the prunes firm and the syrup cloudy, while overcooking can break the fruit apart. Watching for clear syrup and tender fruit shows the sugar has dissolved and the prunes have softened through.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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