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Plum and Apple Jam

A jam made from leftover plums and cooked apples, sweetened with sugar and spiced with cinnamon and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 and Apple Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pass the leftover plums through a sieve.

  2. Add an equal amount of cooked apples.

  3. Sweeten to taste.

  4. Stir in a pinch of cinnamon and cloves.

Cook and jar

  1. Cook the mixture for one hour.

  2. Let it cool, then transfer to jars.

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. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

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

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide fruit flavour, body and natural pectin and acid that help the jam thicken.
Cooked apples
Add pectin and bulk, helping the jam set and mellowing the plum tartness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, once concentrated by cooking, helps the jam set and keep.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture for one hour. Setting depends on enough heat and evaporation to concentrate the sugar and activate the fruit's pectin. Stopping early leaves the jam runny, while overcooking can make it stiff and dull.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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