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Pickled Plums

A preserved plum dish made by boiling plums in a sugar and spice syrup and jarred.

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 ↓

Pickled Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the plums with a large needle.

  2. Weigh the plums.

Make the syrup and pour

  1. In a pot, combine the vinegar, sugar, and spices, and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the packed plums in a large jar.

  3. Repeat this process three times.

  4. While boiling the vinegar for the third time, pack the plums into glass jars.

  5. Pour the syrup over the plums.

  6. Seal the jars when the mixture is cold.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Plum + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 is softened and flavoured by the hot pickling syrup.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit in the syrup.
Pickling vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and helps preserve the plums.

The step that matters

Repeating the boiling pour three times. Repeated hot pourings heat the fruit and draw syrup in, and the syrup must be fully boiling each time so the fruit is properly heated and the pickle keeps well.

Swap the plum

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

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

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