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Dessert

Plum Sauce

A sweet and tart sauce made from plums, sugar, vinegar, mace, cloves, and cinnamon.

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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pit the plums.

Cook and jar

  1. Combine plums, sugar, vinegar, mace, cloves, and cinnamon in a large pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until it thickens enough to preserve.

  3. Pour 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. Clove + cinnamontop 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 and natural pectin that helps the sauce thicken as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, by binding water, helps thicken the sauce and preserve it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the sauce.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the sauce.
Cloves
Add a strong, aromatic spice flavor to the sauce.
Cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until the sauce thickens enough to preserve. Sugar and fruit pectin only set and thicken fully when enough water has evaporated during boiling. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that may spoil sooner in jars, so the cook should judge thickness rather than just time.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, vinegar, clove, 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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