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Dessert

Black Plumb Jam

Jam made from ripest black plum pieces sweetened 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 Plumb Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

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

  2. Place them in a large copper pan and bruise them with a spatula.

  3. Warm the plums over the fire until soft.

  4. Pass the softened plums through a colander using a pestle.

Cook the jam

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

  2. Add 6 ounces of powdered sugar for every pound of jam and mix well.

  3. Return the mixture 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 pulp, flavour and natural pectin that set the jam.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken and keep as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Stirring during the one-hour boil. Thick fruit mixtures scorch easily on the base of a pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat and prevents burnt flavour and sticking, while the sugar-fruit mixture slowly reduces and thickens.

“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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