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 Preserves
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the plums
Scald the plums in water with a small piece of baking soda added.
Remove the plums, cool them, and then stone and weigh them.
Make the syrup
For every pound of fruit, use one pound of sugar.
Dissolve the sugar in enough hot water; use one pint of water for each pound of sugar.
Boil the syrup for 15 minutes, then pour it over the plums and cover until the next morning.
Strain the syrup into a kettle and boil for a while.
Cook and jar
Add the plums to the syrup and cook for 30 minutes, stirring gently.
Skim the plums into jars and strain the syrup over them after boiling for 10 minutes.
Seal the jars after removing the fruit.
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
- The main fruit, which softens and holds its shape in the sugar syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the preserve and helps preserve the fruit by drawing out water.
- Baking soda
- Raises the alkalinity of the scalding water, which softens the plum skins.
The step that matters
Add the plums to the syrup and cook for 30 minutes, stirring gently. Stirring gently keeps the plums whole while they soak up syrup. Stirring hard breaks the softened fruit apart and makes the preserve mushy.
“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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