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Dessert

Preserved Plums

Preserved plums are plums cooked in a sugar syrup and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Wash the plums and prick them slightly to prevent bursting.

  2. Simmer the plums gently in a syrup made with ½ lb sugar and 1 pint water.

  3. Transfer the plums to a pan.

Rest in syrup

  1. Let the syrup cool.

  2. Pour the syrup over the plums.

  3. Allow to sit for two days.

Make the fresh syrup

  1. Quickly dip the remaining sugar lumps in water.

  2. Place them in a preserving pan with just enough water to cover.

  3. Boil the sugar to create a syrup.

  4. Skim it carefully.

  5. Drain the plums from the first syrup.

  6. Add them to the fresh syrup.

  7. Simmer the plums gently until they are clear.

Jar and seal

  1. Lift the plums out individually into jars.

  2. Pour the syrup over them.

  3. Cover to exclude air.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit whose flesh softens and turns clear as it absorbs the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and preserves it while adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Simmer the plums gently until they are clear. Gentle heat lets the sugar syrup slowly penetrate the fruit. A hard boil would split the skins and break the plums apart before they turn clear.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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