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Dessert

Spiced Plums

A preserved plum preserve made with sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Cook the plums until soft or they crack open.

  2. Once cool, remove the pits and return the plums to the kettle.

Spice and thicken

  1. Add sugar, ground cinnamon, vinegar, and ground cloves.

  2. Cook until the mixture thickens and resembles jelly.

Serve

  1. Serve with cold meats.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  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

Red plums
Provide the main fruit body, flavor, and natural pectin that helps the mixture thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the mixture as water evaporates during cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and sharpens the fruit flavor.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the fruit.
Ground cloves
Adds strong, warm aroma that defines the spiced flavor.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture thickens and resembles jelly. Cooking drives off water and concentrates the sugar and fruit pectin. Stopping too early leaves the mixture runny, while cooking too long can make it dense and sticky, so the thickness should be checked by appearance.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

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