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Sauce

Plum Sauce

A sweet and spicy sauce made from plums, sugar, vinegar, spices, and garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove 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 ↓

Plum Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove the stones from the plums.

  2. Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Boil the mixture until it reduces to a pulp.

Strain and bottle

  1. Sieve the mixture to remove solids.

  2. Bottle the sauce for storage.

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. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Ginger + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,402 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  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
Provide the fruit base that cooks down into the sauce's thick pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the sauce along with the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and helps preserve the sauce.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma and savory depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture down to a pulp. Long boiling evaporates water and concentrates the fruit, sugar and acid into a thick sauce. Stopping too early leaves it thin and less shelf-stable, while overcooking can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, vinegar, pepper, ginger, clove, garlic. 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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