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Pickling Plums

A method of preserving plums by boiling them in a sweet vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and plum work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 655 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyl acetate, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Pickling Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, and spices together.

  2. Add the plums and boil until soft.

  3. Remove the plums and boil the syrup until thick.

Pickle the plums

  1. Pour the thick syrup 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. Vinegar + plumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Main fruit that softens during boiling and takes on the flavor of the spiced syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and thickens it as the liquid boils down.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sugar and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentration rises as the syrup reduces, which sets its thickness and helps preserve the fruit. Stopping too early leaves the syrup thin and the pickle less stable, while boiling too long can make it overly stiff and sticky.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar. 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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