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Dessert

Spiced Plums

Preserved plums flavored with cloves, cinnamon, mace, allspice, and sugar, boiled in vinegar.

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

Spiced Plums

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stone the plums.

  2. Put all ingredients into a preserving kettle.

  3. Cover with vinegar.

  4. Boil until tender.

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 + 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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 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
The fruit forms the bulk of the dish, supplying flesh that softens and absorbs the spices.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit, helps preserve it, and thickens the syrup as it cooks.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and helps keep the fruit stable.
Ground cinnamon
Adds a warm, sweet aroma that infuses the fruit during cooking.
Ground cloves
Contributes a strong, pungent aroma that carries through the cooked fruit.
Ground allspice
Adds a warm, peppery aroma that blends with the other spices.

The step that matters

Boil until tender. Heat softens the plum flesh and lets the sugar, vinegar and spices penetrate it. Stopping at the right point keeps the fruit intact while the syrup thickens, since overcooking can make the plums collapse.

Swap the mace

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

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

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