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Dessert

Black Plum Jam

Jam made from black muscle plums with powdered sugar.

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 ↓

Black Plum Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Cut the plums into pieces and remove the stones.

  2. Bruise the plums in a large copper pan.

  3. Warm the bruised plums over the fire until soft.

  4. Pass the mixture through a colander using a pestle.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil the strained mixture for one hour, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  2. Add 6 ounces of powdered sugar for every pound of jam and mix off the heat.

  3. Return to the fire for 10 minutes.

  4. Pour the jam into brown pans and sift powdered sugar over the top.

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

Black muscle plums
Provide the fruit, pectin and flavour that form the body of the jam.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and set as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boiling the strained mixture while stirring constantly. Sugary fruit pulp scorches easily on the bottom of a pan over direct heat. Constant stirring keeps it moving, spreads the heat evenly, and prevents burning that would spoil the flavour of the jam.

“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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