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Dessert

Black Plum Jam

Jam made from ripe black plums, sweetened with powdered sugar, cooked until thick.

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. Place the plums in a large copper pan.

  3. Bruise the plums with a spatula.

  4. Warm the plums over the fire until soft.

  5. Pass the mixture through a colander using a pestle to extract as much as possible.

Cook the jam

  1. Boil the mixture for one hour.

  2. Stir the mixture constantly to prevent burning.

  3. Add 6 ounces of powdered sugar for every pound of jam.

  4. Mix off the heat.

  5. Return the mixture to the fire for 10 minutes.

  6. Remove the mixture from the fire.

Finish

  1. Pour the jam into brown pans.

  2. 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 plums
Provide the fruit, pectin and acidity that form the jam's body and flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the jam and helps it thicken as it cooks and sets.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture constantly. Plum pulp is thick and sugary near the pan base, so it scorches easily over a fire. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and prevents burning, which would give the jam a bitter, smoky taste.

“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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