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Dessert

Spiced Blackberries

A preserve of blackberries simmered with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spiced Blackberries

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sugar and vinegar together with the spices in muslin bags.

  2. Add the blackberries and let them scald, but do not boil.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 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

Blackberries
Provide the main fruit body, moisture and flavour of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water and inhibiting spoilage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the fruit flavour.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the syrup.
Ground cloves
Adds strong, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the syrup.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses into the syrup.

The step that matters

Scald the blackberries without boiling. Boiling breaks down the fruit and makes it mushy, while gentle scalding softens it just enough to absorb the syrup and keep its shape.

Swap the mace

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

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

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