Skip to main content
Sauce

Plum Catsup

A plum-based condiment made by boiling plums with sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the pitted plums, sugar, and vinegar in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until the plums are soft.

  3. Add cinnamon, mace, cloves, pepper, and nutmeg to taste.

  4. Continue boiling until the mixture thickens.

  5. Do not strain the mixture.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the bulk of the fruit, pectin, and tartness that give the ketchup its body and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during boiling, helps thicken the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the mixture thickens. Thickening depends on water evaporating and sugar and fruit pectin concentrating. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce, while over-boiling can scorch the sugar on the pot bottom, so stir often near the end.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes