Name: Pickles, Catsups, Etc
Ingredients: 4 ounces salt; 3 ounces ground black pepper; 1 ounce cinnamon; ½ ounce ground cloves; 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper; 1 teacup sugar; 1 quart cider vinegar

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 ↓

Pickles, Catsups, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients until soft, then rub through a fine sieve to remove seeds.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Add salt, black pepper, cinnamon, ground cloves, cayenne pepper, sugar, and cider vinegar.
Boil down until thick, stirring constantly to prevent burning.
Bottle while hot.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,890 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Swap the clove

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

Allspicefits about as well
Clovethe original
Nutmegfits less well
Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cinnamon, sugar, cider, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.