Skip to main content
Snack

Round Plum Pickle

A pickle of ripe plums preserved in salt, spices, and vinegar, sun-dried and stored in a bottle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Round Plum Pickle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Wash the plums and place them in a damp cloth.

  2. Roll the cloth to remove dust and sprinkle the plums with coarse sea salt.

  3. Leave the plums in the sun for three to four days.

Pack and pickle

  1. Drain the water and layer the plums in a bottle with garlic, chilies, ginger, peppercorns, and mustard-seed.

  2. Add a little salt and fill the bottle with vinegar.

  3. Cork the bottle and expose it to the sun for fifteen to twenty days.

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 + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Garlic + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Garlic + gingertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Main fruit that softens and absorbs the salt, vinegar and spices as it pickles.
Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the plums and helps preserve them during the sun-drying stage.
Vinegar
Acid that preserves the plums and gives the pickle its sharp, tangy flavour.
Garlic
Adds pungent aroma and savoury depth to the pickling liquid.
Green or fresh red chilies
Add heat and fresh pungency that flavours the plums as they pickle.

The step that matters

Sun-drying the salted plums. Salt must draw out enough water before the plums are packed, otherwise the vinegar is diluted and the pickle can spoil. Keep the plums in the sun for the full three to four days so the salt has time to work.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, garlic, ginger, mustard, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, garlic, ginger, mustard, 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.

More pickled plums recipes

Sweet 4 See all 49 →

You might also like

FrittersFritters56 recipesCrisp CrackersCrisp Crackers7 recipes