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Sauce

Plum Catsup

A sweet and spicy plum sauce made by cooking plums, sugar, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plum puree

  1. Place the plums in a pot with 2 quarts of water and cook until soft.

  2. Pass the cooked plums through a colander to remove skins and pits.

Cook and bottle

  1. Add the sugar, cinnamon, mixed spice, salt, and pepper to the plum puree and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the vinegar.

  3. Bottle the catsup immediately while still hot.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Plum + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cinnamon + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  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

Ripe red plums
Provide the main body and fruity bulk that the sauce thickens around.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and deeper caramel notes as the sauce simmers.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the finished sauce.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm aroma and spiced flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the puree with sugar and spices for 30 minutes. Simmering lets water evaporate so the plum puree thickens into a sauce and the sugar and spices blend. Stirring in the vinegar off the heat keeps its sharp acidity bright rather than cooked down.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Lemonfits about as well
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Plumthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, pepper, 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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