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Preserve of Damson Plums

A preserve made by boiling damson plums with vinegar, brown sugar, cloves, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Preserve of Damson Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Stone the damson plums.

  2. In a kettle, combine vinegar, brown sugar, powdered cloves, and mace.

  3. Boil the mixture and skim off any foam.

Cook the plums

  1. Add the plums and let them boil well.

  2. Remove the plums and boil down the syrup until thickened.

  3. Mix the plums back into the syrup.

  4. Transfer to an earthen crock.

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 + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Plum + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Damson plums
Provide the fruit body and tart flavor that forms the bulk of the preserve.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it cooks down, thickens the syrup into a glossy set.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the fruit.
Powdered cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boil down the syrup until thickened. Once the plums are removed, the syrup must reduce enough to thicken. As water evaporates, sugar concentration rises, which lets the syrup gel and hold the fruit when it is returned. Under-reduced syrup stays thin and runny.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, vinegar, sugar, 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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