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Dessert

Plums, Pears, Peaches or Other Fruits

A preserve made by cooking peeled fruit with sugar, vinegar, water, and spices until thickened.

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

Plums, Pears, Peaches or Other Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Layer the fruit and sugar in a kettle.

  2. Add 1 pint of boiling water to the bottom.

  3. Heat slowly to a boil.

Cook and reduce the syrup

  1. Add spices and vinegar.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the fruit with a perforated skimmer.

  4. Place the fruit on a dish to cool.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

Pack and serve

  1. Pack the fruit in glass jars.

  2. Pour the boiling hot syrup over the fruit.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + cinnamontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

Fruit
Forms the body of the preserve and supplies flavour and pectin for a set.
White sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, once boiled, thickens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Syrup that is boiled too briefly stays thin and runny, while over-boiling can turn it stiff or caramelised. Judging the thickness by eye is what sets the preserve's texture.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Allspicefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, 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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