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Dessert

Brandy Plums

A preserved plum dessert soaked in brandy and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Brandy Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a large pot and heat until the sugar melts.

Cook the plums

  1. Prick each plum with a pin and add them to the syrup.

  2. Transfer the plums to cold water, then return them to the syrup and let them sit until tender, without boiling.

  3. Strain the syrup and let it cool.

Jar and seal

  1. Once cool, place the plums in jars and add ½ pint of brandy for every ½ pint of syrup, then seal the jars.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Make up the fruit that is cooked gently in syrup and becomes tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's texture and flavor.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the finished plums and syrup.

The step that matters

Let the plums sit without boiling. Boiling breaks down the plum skins and flesh, so the fruit turns mushy instead of staying tender and whole. Holding the syrup just below a boil lets the heat soften the fruit gradually.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. 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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