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Plum or Crabapple Catsup

A sweet and tangy fruit catsup made from plums or crabapples, sugar, vinegar, cloves, pepper, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Plum or Crabapple Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Scald the fruit and pass it through a colander.

  2. Mix all the ingredients together in a pot.

  3. Boil the mixture until it reaches the consistency of jam.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Plum + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums or crabapples
Supplies the bulk and natural pectin that thickens the catsup as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture set into a thick, jam-like texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that flavors the catsup.

The step that matters

Boiling to jam consistency. As the mixture boils, water evaporates and the sugar and fruit pectin concentrate and set. Stop too early and the catsup stays thin; cook too long and it turns stiff and sticky.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

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