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Pickled Plums

Pickled plums preserved in a cider vinegar and sugar brine with spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Pickled Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prick each plum to the stone with a large needle.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the sugar in the cider vinegar.

Cook

  1. Add the plums and small muslin bags filled with nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon to the saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, skimming off any foam.

Jar

  1. Transfer the warm plums and liquid into stone jars, placing the muslin bags among the plums.

  2. Cork the jars immediately.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

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

  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

Plums
Provide the fruit that softens and absorbs the spiced, sharp pickling liquid.
Powdered white sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the fruit.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the pickle its sharp flavour and helps preserve the fruit.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Skimming the foam while boiling. Foam that is left on the surface can carry impurities and spoil the flavour and clarity of the pickling liquid, so it should be skimmed off as the mixture boils.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, cider, vinegar, nutmeg, 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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