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For Preserving Plums

A method for preserving plums in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

For Preserving Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the plums with a fork and place them in a stone jar.

  2. Make a syrup by heating ¾ pound of sugar with 1 pound of plums.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit.

  4. Let the plums sit in a cool place overnight.

Repeat the syrup treatment

  1. Drain off the syrup.

  2. Heat the syrup again.

  3. Pour the hot syrup back over the plums.

  4. Repeat steps 5-7 for three mornings.

Can the plums

  1. On the fourth morning, heat the plums and syrup to boiling point and can them.

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 + sugartop 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

Plums
Provide the fruit flesh, which gives the preserve its body, texture and tart-sweet flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, at high concentration in the syrup, helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water and slowing spoilage.

The step that matters

Bringing the plums and syrup to a full boil before canning. Boiling heats the fruit and syrup through, which helps destroy spoilage microbes and lets the jars seal. The sugar built up through the repeated syrup treatments is what keeps the fruit preserved afterward.

“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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