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Dessert

Green Plum Conserve

A sweet preserve made from green plums, sugar, raisins, walnuts, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Plum Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Make the conserve

  1. Add grated lemon rind to the rest of the ingredients.

  2. Cook in a kettle with enough water to prevent burning until it begins to thicken.

  3. Add half of the sugar and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the remaining sugar and cook until the conserve is stiff and jellies when tested on a saucer.

Seal

  1. Seal like jam.

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. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Plum + walnuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Green plums
Provide the fruit base and natural tartness that gives the conserve its flavour and pectin-driven set.
Sugar
Sweetens the conserve and, once dissolved and concentrated, helps it thicken and set into a stiff jelly.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the conserve.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the rind, and juice that helps balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar in two parts. Adding half the sugar first and the rest later lets the fruit soften and thicken before sugar slows evaporation. Cooking until it is stiff and sheets on a saucer confirms the set, since underthickened conserve will not jell.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, walnut, lemon. 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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