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Preserve

Preserving By Spirits

A method of preserving fruits such as plums, apricots, cherries, or peaches in sugar and strong spirits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spirit and plum work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Preserving By Spirits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather fruits before they are fully ripe.

  2. Soak fruits in very hard water for several hours to firm them up.

Steep

  1. Mix 5 ounces of sugar into 1 quart of strong spirits.

  2. Submerge the fruits in the sugar-spirit mixture.

  3. Seal jars tightly to prevent air from entering.

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. Spirit + plumtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + spirittop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together602 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw flavor from the fruit into the spirit.
Strong spirits
Extracts flavor from the fruit and preserves it against spoilage.
Fruits
Provide the main flavor, with aroma and sweetness carried into the spirit.

The step that matters

Seal jars tightly. Keeping air out limits oxidation and spoilage during steeping, so the fruit flavor stays clean rather than turning stale or off.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, spirit. 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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