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Dessert

Spiced Plums

A sweet and spiced plum preserve made with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and cider vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Spiced Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pit the plums.

Make the preserves

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, plums, cinnamon, and cloves.

  2. Boil for 2 hours, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add cider vinegar and cook for a few more minutes.

Jar

  1. Transfer the mixture into jars and seal.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Plum + cidertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates while boiling, helps the fruit set into a preserve.
Blue damson plums
Provide the fruit body, flavor, and natural pectin that help the preserve thicken.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and supports the preserve's keeping quality.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and sweet spice flavor.
Ground cloves
Adds strong aromatic spice flavor.

The step that matters

Long, occasionally stirred boil. Boiling for two hours drives off water so sugar and fruit pectin can thicken the mixture. Stirring helps prevent the sugar and fruit from scorching on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Applefits better
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, clove, cider, 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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