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Preserve

Green Gage Plum Preserves

Preserves made from green gage plums, sugar, and water, cooked slowly to a syrup.

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 ↓

Green Gage Plum Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the skins of the plums with a sharp instrument to prevent cracking.

  2. Cut fine brass wire into 1.5-inch lengths and press a dozen through a cork to create a pricking tool.

Make and cook the preserves

  1. Make a syrup by boiling the water and sugar together.

  2. Add the plums to the boiling syrup and cook slowly at 218°F (103°C).

  3. Cool the plums in cooling pans.

  4. Process the plums for 25 minutes at 170°F (77°C).

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

Green gage plums
Provide the fruit, whose skins are pricked so they do not crack during cooking.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in the syrup, helps preserve it and firm its texture.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup in which the plums cook.

The step that matters

Cooking the plums slowly in boiling syrup. Cooking slowly at a steady temperature lets the syrup penetrate the fruit gradually, so the plums keep their shape and do not burst or turn mushy. Pricking the skins first lets the syrup enter and prevents the skins from splitting.

“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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