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Dessert

Preserved Plums

Preserved plums are plums sweetened with sugar and stored in 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 ↓

Preserved Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the plums

  1. Layer the plums and sugar in a stone jar.

  2. Place the jar in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the oven cools.

  3. If prepared at tea time, leave until morning.

Make the syrup and jar

  1. Strain the juice from the plums and boil it to clarify.

  2. Carefully transfer the fruit to glass or china jars.

  3. Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and cover with egg, tissue paper, or bladder tied down.

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 that is preserved and flavours the syrup as it softens.
Sugar
Draws juice out of the fruit and forms a syrup that helps preserve it through sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the hot syrup over the fruit and cover it. Sugar in the syrup must be concentrated enough to limit spoilage, and the fruit must stay submerged. Air exposure at the surface can allow mould to start, so the cover should seal the jar well.

“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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