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Dessert

Preserved Plums

Preserved plums are plums cooked in sugar syrup and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Preserved Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Weigh the plums.

  2. Scald the plums to remove the skins.

  3. Let the plums sit in a bowl to allow the juice to exude.

  4. Drain the juice.

  5. Weigh an equal amount of sugar.

Make the syrup

  1. Layer the plums and sugar in a kettle.

  2. Pour the juice over the plums.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Remove the plums with a skimmer.

  5. Boil the syrup until thick.

  6. Return the plums to the kettle.

  7. Boil for ten minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill jars three-quarters full with the plums.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the plums.

  3. Seal the jars while hot.

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, flavor and bulk that the preserve is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves into the syrup, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil the syrup until thick. Sugar concentrates as the juice boils down, and that concentration is what keeps the preserve from spoiling. Syrup that is not reduced enough leaves the fruit vulnerable.

“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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