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Dessert

Plum Paste

A preserved plum paste made by boiling plums, sieving pulp, adding sugar, and setting in molds to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Plum Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Remove the stones from the plums.

  2. Place the plums in a pan with a little water.

  3. Boil until they form a jam.

  4. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve to extract the pulp.

  5. Weigh the pulp.

Make the sugar and combine

  1. Add an equal amount of loaf-sugar.

  2. Clarify the sugar.

  3. Boil the sugar until it reaches a soft ball stage.

  4. Mix the sugar with the pulp.

  5. Boil together.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into molds.

  2. Let it dry.

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

Plums
Provide the fruit pulp that gives the paste its flavour and body.
Loaf-sugar
Sweetens the paste and, when boiled down, helps it set firm as it dries.

The step that matters

Boil together. Once the sugar and pulp are combined, the mixture must be cooked long enough to reduce its water content. Insufficient cooking leaves the paste soft and sticky, while overcooking can make it hard and brittle.

“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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