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 Jam
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Remove the stones from the plums and place them in a large dish.
Sprinkle roughly ¼ lb of sugar over the plums and let them sit for one day.
Cook
Transfer the plums to a preserving pan and simmer gently by the fire for 30 minutes.
Boil rapidly for another 15 minutes, stirring constantly and removing any scum that rises.
Optionally, crack some of the stones and add a few kernels to the jam before it finishes cooking for extra flavor.
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 fruit, pectin and acidity that give the jam its body and tang.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice while it sits, and helps the jam set.
The step that matters
Boil rapidly while stirring constantly. Sugar-heavy fruit scorches easily on the bottom of the pan, and a rapid boil is needed to reach the set point. Constant stirring prevents burning and lets the scum be skimmed off cleanly.
“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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