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 Tart
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cook the plums
Place the plums in a saucepan.
Cover the plums with water.
Add sugar in the proportion of ½ pound for every pound of plums.
Simmer until the plums are tender but not mashed.
Remove the plums from the saucepan.
Drain the liquid.
Return the liquid to the saucepan.
Add ½ pound of sugar for every pint of liquid.
Boil until it thickens into a syrup.
Assemble and bake
Prepare a flat dish with short crust pastry.
Bake the pastry lightly.
Divide each plum.
Remove the stones from each plum.
Spread the plums over the crust.
Pour the thick syrup over the plums slowly to allow it to soak in.
Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.
Serve.
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.
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Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 main fruit body and tart flavour that the syrup sweetens.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, when boiled with the liquid, thickens it into a syrup.
- Short crust pastry
- Forms the flat base that holds the plums and syrup while baking.
The step that matters
Boil the liquid until it thickens into a syrup. Sugar dissolved in the cooking liquid thickens as water evaporates during boiling. If the syrup is too thin, it soaks into the pastry and makes the base soggy; if it is over-reduced, it turns stiff and sticky.
“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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