Skip to main content
Dessert

Spiced Blackberries

A sweet and spiced blackberry preserve made with sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, mace, and blackberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 Blackberries

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine sugar and vinegar, and bring to a boil.

  2. Place the spices in a muslin bag and add them to the boiling mixture.

  3. Add the blackberries and let them scald, but do not boil.

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 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

Blackberries
Supply the fruit and its juice, which gives the finished mixture its body and color.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps thicken the syrup while preserving the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sugar and helps preserve the fruit.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma in small amounts.
Ground allspice
Adds a warm, peppery aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Scalding the blackberries without boiling. Holding the berries just below a boil keeps them intact and firm. Full boiling breaks down the fruit's cell walls, making them soft and mushy and releasing more juice than intended.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes