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Dessert

Stewed French Plums

Stewed French plums simmered in a syrup of port wine and lemon, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed French Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Gently stew the plums in water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the water and use it to make the syrup.

Cook the plums

  1. Once the syrup is clear, add the plums, port wine, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Simmer very gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the plums on a glass dish, remove the lemon rind, and pour the syrup over the plums.

  2. Let cool before serving.

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 + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 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. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Port wine + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. 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

French plums
Their flesh softens during gentle stewing, giving the fruit a tender texture.
Syrup
Sweetens the fruit and keeps it moist as it cools.
Port wine
Adds deep, fruity flavour and a warm aroma to the syrup.
Lemon
The juice adds acidity and the rind adds bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently. Boiling vigorously can split the plum skins and break the fruit apart, so keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer preserves the shape and a clear syrup.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, syrup, port wine. 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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