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Dessert

Plum Catsup

A sweet and tangy plum preserve made by boiling plums with sugar, vinegar, spices, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Boil the plums until soft, then strain to remove skins and pits.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a large pot, combine the strained plums, sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture thickens.

Jar

  1. Pour into sterilized jars and seal.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the main fruit body, flavour and natural pectin that help the ketchup thicken.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and body, and helps thicken the mixture as it cooks down.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps preserve the ketchup.

The step that matters

Cooking until thickened. Stirring frequently over medium heat keeps the sugar-rich fruit from scorching on the bottom of the pot. The mixture must reduce enough to thicken, since it sets as water evaporates and the sugar concentrates.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, clove, allspice, pepper. 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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