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Dessert

Plum Sweetmeats

A preserved plum confection made with Damson plums, sugar, cinnamon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Plum Sweetmeats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Peel and divide the Damson plums, removing the stones.

  2. Cook the plums over gentle heat in their own juice until soft.

  3. Rub the cooked plums through a sieve and return to the stove.

Season and finish

  1. Add enough sugar to sweeten.

  2. Add a little cinnamon.

  3. Add wine to taste.

  4. Cook until nearly done.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Plum + winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cinnamon + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Damson plums
Provide the main fruit body, tartness, and pectin that gives the finished sweetmeat its set.
Sugar
Sweetens the purée and helps it thicken and preserve its texture as it cooks down.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the plum flavour.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the fruit purée.

The step that matters

Cook until nearly done. Plum purée thickens as moisture evaporates and sugar concentrates. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, wine. 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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