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Dessert

Pickled Plums or Cherries

A method of preserving plums or cherries in a sweet vinegar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Pickled Plums or Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the fruit from the stem and puncture each piece with a fork.

  2. Place the fruit in a stone jar.

Make and pour the syrup

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, sugar, cinnamon bark, cloves, and allspice to make a syrup.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the fruit and let it sit for two mornings.

Cook and seal

  1. On the third morning, boil the fruit in the syrup for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the fruit and place it into small stone jars.

  3. Boil the syrup until it thickens to the consistency of molasses.

  4. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and seal the 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. 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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fruit (plums or cherries)
Provides the main body and flavor of the preserve, softened by the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out moisture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the fruit.
Cinnamon bark
Adds warm, sweet aroma to the syrup.
Cloves
Adds pungent, warm aroma to the syrup.
Allspice
Adds warm, mixed-spice aroma to the syrup.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to molasses consistency. Reducing the syrup concentrates its sugar and vinegar. If it is too thin, the fruit may spoil; if it is over-reduced, it can turn stiff or crystallize once cooled.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

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