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Plum or Crab-apple Catsup

A sweet and tangy catsup made from plums or crab-apples, sugar, vinegar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 or Crab-apple Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Scald the fruit and remove the skins.

  2. Pass the fruit through a colander.

Cook the catsup

  1. Mix the fruit with sugar, vinegar, cloves, pepper, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens to a jam-like consistency.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Plum + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums or crab-apples
Provide the fruit base and pectin that give the catsup its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and preserves the catsup.

The step that matters

Boil until jam-like. Cooking the mixture long enough lets water evaporate and the fruit pectin and sugar set into a jam-like consistency. Stopping too early leaves it thin and runny, while cooking too long can scorch the sugar and fruit on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, clove, pepper, 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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