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Damson Pickle

A preserved pickle made from damsons or long blue plums, vinegar, sugar, cloves, mace, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Damson Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe off the bloom from the damsons or plums and prick each with a needle.

Make the pickle

  1. In a saucepan, combine the vinegar, sugar, cloves, mace, and cinnamon; boil for 15 minutes.

  2. Place the fruit in a jar and pour the saucepan mixture over it.

  3. Allow to stand for 24 hours, then boil until the fruit is tender or the skin is just cracked.

  4. Seal the jar while hot; the pickle will be ready to eat in about 6 weeks.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Plum + clovetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together446 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 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

Damsons or long blue plums
Provide the fruit, whose skin and flesh soften and absorb the spiced vinegar syrup.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that preserves the fruit and gives the pickle its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the spiced syrup.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit until tender or just cracked. Boiling after the 24-hour standing softens the fruit and lets it take up the syrup. Stopping when the skin just cracks keeps the fruit whole rather than collapsing into mush.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, vinegar, sugar, 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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