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Dessert

Green-gage Plums

Preserved plums layered with vine leaves, boiled, and stored in syrup with brandy paper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Green-gage Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Select the largest and clearest plums from the peck.

  2. Layer vine leaves and plums in a pan, alternating until full.

  3. Fill the pan with water and heat over moderate fire until hot, then skim off any foam.

  4. Pour off the water.

  5. Place the plums on a sieve to cool.

  6. Carefully remove the peels.

Green the plums

  1. Place the peels in the heated water with fresh leaves.

  2. Boil for three minutes, keeping the steam contained.

  3. Let the plums sit away from the fire for seven to eight hours until they turn green.

  4. Drain the plums on a sieve.

Syrup and pack

  1. Boil them in a clear syrup once a day for three days.

  2. Transfer the plums to clean, dry jars.

  3. Strain the syrup over the fire.

  4. When nearly cold, pour it over the plums.

  5. Cover with brandy paper and seal with bladder.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Green-gage plums
The fruit that forms the preserve and carries its flavour and texture.
Vine leaves
Add a subtle aromatic note and help the plums keep a green colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, in a syrup, helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Boil them in a clear syrup once a day for three days. Repeated gentle heating in syrup lets sugar gradually move into the fruit while the skins stay intact. Boiling hard would burst the plums and cloud the syrup.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, syrup):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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