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Dessert

Cherry or Plum Catsup

A fruit-based catsup made from cherries, damsons, or plums, brown sugar, vinegar, mace, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Cherry or Plum Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Combine the fruit, brown sugar, vinegar, mace, and cloves in a large pot.

  2. Boil for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the fruit from the mixture.

Reduce the syrup and seal

  1. Boil the syrup for an additional 30 minutes.

  2. Pour the syrup over the fruit and seal 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.

  1. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Plum + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together655 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cherries, damsons, or plums
Provides the main fruit body, flavor, and pulp that gives the catsup its texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as the syrup cooks down, body and a deeper color.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the sweetness.
Ground mace
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the syrup.
Cloves
Contributes strong, warm aroma and spice flavor to the syrup.

The step that matters

Sealing while the syrup is hot. Pouring the syrup over the fruit while it is still hot helps drive air out of the jar, so the seal can form as it cools. Letting it cool first can leave the catsup prone to spoiling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, vinegar, 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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