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 ↓
To Phesbkte Flohs Wbols
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the plums and syrup
Scald your plums, either greengages or mussel, and when soft take them up with a strainer and put them in cold water.
Clarify five pots of sugar in a flat pan, adding the plums one by one so as not to overheat the mixture.
Steep and jar
Mash the plums and pour the syrup over them a little more than lukewarm twice a day for five days.
Take up the plums and put them on a sieve to drain. Then boil your syrup again and skim it clear. Put your plums in the jars you intend to keep them in and pour the syrup over them rather warm.
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. See the original page.
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.
-
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,842 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the jam and, once concentrated in the syrup, helps preserve the fruit.
- Plums (in the method)
- Provide the fruit body, flesh and flavour of the jam.
The step that matters
Adding the plums to the hot sugar one by one. Dropping in plums all at once cools the syrup sharply and can cause uneven heating. Adding them gradually keeps the sugar from scorching and keeps the temperature steady.
“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.
More plum jam recipes
You might also like
Oranges in Syrup9 recipes
Syrup Sauce6 recipes
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.