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Dessert

Plum Preserves

A sweet preserve made by boiling plums with sugar and spices.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Peel the plums by boiling them for 2-3 minutes, then transferring them to cold water.

  2. In a stone, porcelain, or glass jar, layer sugar and plums until desired fullness.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the juice and bring it to a boil, skimming well.

Cook and seal

  1. Drop the fruit into the hot syrup and boil slowly until the fruit is clear.

  2. Add spices and seal the jar.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit that softens and turns clear during slow simmering in syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws water out of it, helping preserve it.
Cinnamon sticks
Add warm, sweet aroma to the syrup and fruit.
Cloves
Add a pungent, warm aroma that flavors the preserves.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma to the preserves.

The step that matters

Boil the fruit slowly until clear. Vigorous boiling breaks down plum skins and flesh, so the fruit falls apart. A gentle simmer keeps pieces intact while sugar slowly penetrates and the fruit becomes translucent.

Swap the mace

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

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

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