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 ↓
Green Gage Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the plums
Pour boiling water over the plums and wipe them dry.
Prick the plums.
Make the syrup and cook
Combine sugar and ½ cup water in a saucepan to make a syrup.
Bring the syrup to a boil and add half of the plums.
Cook slowly until the plums look clear.
Remove the plums and repeat with the remaining ones.
If the syrup is thin, boil it longer.
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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Plum + sugartop 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
- Green gage plums
- Provide the fruit that softens and turns clear as it cooks in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that the fruit cooks in.
The step that matters
Cook slowly until the plums look clear. Gentle heat lets sugar syrup slowly penetrate the fruit so it becomes translucent and holds its shape. Boiling hard can break the skins and make the plums collapse.
“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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