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Dessert

Compote of Prunes

A compote made from dried French plums simmered in water, lemon peel, red wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and red wine work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Compote of Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the plums in warm water for 20 minutes.

  2. Simmer the plums in a thin syrup made with water, lemon peel, and red wine for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve the plums with their syrup.

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 + red winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + red winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together779 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Dried plums
Soften during soaking and simmering, becoming tender and sweet while absorbing the syrup.
Red wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the syrup, balancing the sweetness of the fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and contributes to its body as it reduces slightly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, red wine, sugar. 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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