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Dessert

Preserved Plums or Cherries

A method of preserving plums or cherries in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓

Preserved Plums or Cherries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Dissolve the brown sugar in water.

  2. Boil the mixture until clear.

Steep the fruit

  1. Pour the hot syrup over the cleaned plums or cherries.

  2. Remove any unsound fruit and stems.

  3. Let the fruit sit in the syrup for 2 days.

  4. Drain the syrup.

  5. Reheat the syrup until boiling, then skim it.

  6. Pour the syrup over the fruit again.

  7. Let the fruit sit for another day or two.

Finish and jar

  1. Simmer the fruit in a preserving kettle until the syrup thickens.

  2. Place the fruit in jars or pots.

  3. Secure the jars or pots.

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 + plumtop 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

Brown sugar
Dissolves into the syrup that sweetens the fruit and preserves it by drawing out moisture.
Plums or cherries
Provide the fruit that absorbs the syrup and becomes sweet and tender during steeping.

The step that matters

Simmer until the syrup thickens. Simmering concentrates the sugar syrup so it becomes thick enough to coat and preserve the fruit. Stopping too early leaves a thin syrup that may not keep the fruit well.

“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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