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Dessert

Plum Cheese

A preserved plum product made by boiling plums, adding sugar, cooking like jam, and slicing after cooling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,313 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Plum Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil plums in enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Wash and strain the plums.

Make the preserve

  1. For every pound of pulp, add ½ pound of clear brown sugar.

  2. Cook the mixture like jam, stirring to prevent burning.

Cool and cut

  1. Once thickened, allow to cool and cut into slices.

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. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit pulp that forms the body and flavour of the preserve.
Clear brown sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks, helps the mixture thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture like jam, stirring to prevent burning.. Sugar-rich fruit mixtures scorch easily on the bottom of the pan because sugar caramelises at high heat. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and lets the mixture reduce and thicken without burning.

“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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