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For Hot or Cold Meat

A pickled damson fruit preserved with sugar, vinegar, cloves, cinnamon, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

For Hot or Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Place 5 lbs of damsons in an earthen pan.

  2. In a stewpan, combine 4 lbs of loaf sugar, 1½ pints of best wine vinegar, 24 cloves, ½ oz of cinnamon, and 2 oz of mace.

  3. Boil the mixture well, then let it simmer for some time.

Steep and pickle

  1. Pour the mixture over the damsons, cover, and let it stand for 24 hours.

  2. On the third day, take the juice, boil it again, and pour it over the fruit as before.

  3. Boil the fruit and juice together for 5 minutes, then pour into jars and seal while hot.

  4. Let the pickle sit for six months before using.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

Damsons
The main fruit, which softens and absorbs the spiced vinegar syrup during steeping.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup and helps preserve the fruit.
Best wine vinegar
Provides the acidity that sharpens the fruit and helps preserve the pickle.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour to the syrup.
Cinnamon
Contributes warm, sweet spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the juice and fruit for 5 minutes before sealing. Boiling the fruit and juice together heats the pickle through so it can be sealed hot in jars. Under-boiling may leave the pickle less well preserved, while the sugar and vinegar work together to keep the fruit stable over the long rest.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine, vinegar, clove, 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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