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Pickled Plums

Pickled plums preserved in a sugar‑vinegar syrup with cloves and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Pickled Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickle

  1. Boil sugar, vinegar, and spices together.

  2. Pour the mixture over the fruit.

  3. When cool, strain off the syrup.

  4. Boil the syrup.

  5. Pour the boiled syrup over the fruit again.

  6. Repeat this process on the first day.

Rest and finish

  1. Let the plums stand for three days.

  2. Drain off the syrup.

  3. Boil the syrup again.

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. 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
Main fruit; the flesh softens and absorbs the sweet, sour syrup as it stands.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and helps keep the pickle stable.
Whole cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Stick cinnamon
Contributes sweet, woody aroma that flavors the syrup and fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup fully before each pouring. A full boil dissolves the sugar completely and heats the syrup so it penetrates the fruit. A weak boil leaves the syrup thinner and less able to preserve the plums.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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