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Damson Plum Catsup

A sweet and spicy plum sauce made with damson plums, 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: 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 ↓

Damson Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Cook half a box of plums in a little water until well done.

  2. Rub the cooked plums through a sieve.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add sugar, allspice, cinnamon, cloves, and cayenne pepper to the sieved plums.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for one hour.

  3. Add boiling vinegar.

  4. Cook for a few more minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the main fruit body, pectin, and tart flavour that forms the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the ketchup as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the ketchup its tang.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and spice flavour to the ketchup.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for one hour. Slow cooking lets excess water evaporate gradually, concentrating flavour and thickening the purée without scorching the sugars. Cooking too fast can burn the sugar and leave the ketchup watery or bitter.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

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