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Sauce

Plum Catsup

A plum-based sauce made with sugar, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Scald the plums and remove the skins.

  2. Pass the plums through a colander.

Make the ketchup

  1. Add sugar, cloves, cinnamon, pepper, and salt to the plum puree.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reaches the desired 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
Provide the fruit base, with pectin and acid that help the ketchup thicken and taste tart.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and concentrates, helps thicken the sauce and preserve it.

The step that matters

Boiling to the desired consistency. Sugar and fruit solids thicken as water evaporates and the sauce concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it thin, while overcooking makes it stiff and can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the plum

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

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

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