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Plum Pickles

A sweet and spiced pickle made by preserving plums in a sugar‑vinegar brine.

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 ↓

Plum Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

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

  2. Scald the mixture over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.

Pickle the plums

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the plums in a large bowl or jar.

  2. Let the plums sit for 10 days.

  3. After 10 days, pour off the liquid and scald it again before pouring it back over the plums.

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
Are the fruit being preserved, softening and taking on the spiced vinegar flavor as they sit.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and adds sweetness to the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Acidifies the liquid, providing the tang and helping preserve the fruit.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet spice aroma to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Scalding the liquid before it goes over the plums. Heating the sugar, vinegar, and spices until the sugar dissolves gives an evenly sweetened, spiced liquid. Pouring it hot over the fruit helps it penetrate and begin softening 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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