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Plum Catsup

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pit the plums.

Cook

  1. Combine plums, sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, and salt in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool before bottling.

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. 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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit base, pectin, and most of the body of the ketchup.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Stirring during the cook. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures can scorch on the bottom of the pot before they thicken. Stirring occasionally keeps the sugars from burning and spreads heat evenly.

Swap the plum

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

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

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

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