Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓
Dried Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Stem, stone, and clean the plums, removing any specks.
In a porcelain kettle, combine the plums and sugar.
Heat slowly to extract the juice.
Scald the plums
Scald the plums thoroughly without boiling.
Remove the fruit with a coarse wire skimmer and spread it on platters.
Scald the remaining plums in the same syrup.
Make the syrup and dry
Boil the syrup for 5 to 10 minutes.
Pour the syrup over the plums and dry them quickly.
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.
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Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 flesh and natural juice that becomes the syrup and the dried texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and draws water out of the fruit, thickening the syrup and preserving the plums.
The step that matters
Scald without boiling. Holding the plums just below a boil heats them through and softens them gently while keeping the skins intact. Boiling bursts the skins and turns the fruit mushy, so it no longer dries into firm, whole pieces.
“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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