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Dessert

Pickled Prunes

A preserved prune dish made by boiling prunes in a sugar and vinegar syrup with cinnamon and cloves.

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 Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the prunes

  1. Wipe the prunes with a damp cloth.

  2. Prick each prune with a silver fork to prevent cracking.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar, water, and sugar until clear.

  2. Add the bag of cinnamon and cloves to the mixture.

Cook and jar the prunes

  1. Add enough prunes to fill one jar.

  2. Cook the prunes until tender but not too soft.

  3. Remove the prunes to a heated jar using a perforated skimmer.

  4. Repeat until all prunes are cooked.

  5. Drain the syrup from the jars into a kettle.

  6. Cook the syrup for about 10 minutes longer.

  7. Pour the syrup over the prunes and screw on the tops.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

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

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

Prunes
The main fruit; cooking softens its flesh so it becomes tender but holds its shape.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and preserves the pickled flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the syrup and helps balance the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook the prunes until tender but not too soft. Overcooking breaks down the fruit's cell walls, so prunes turn mushy and lose their shape. Pricking the skins beforehand prevents them from splitting during cooking.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, 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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