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To Preserve Purple Plums

A method for preserving purple plums in a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓

To Preserve Purple Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling brown sugar with water until clear.

Soak the plums

  1. Pour the hot syrup over cleaned plums, removing any unsound ones and stems.

  2. Let the plums sit in the syrup for two days, then drain the syrup.

  3. Reheat the syrup until boiling, skim it, and pour it over the plums again.

  4. Let the plums sit for another day or two.

Cook the preserves

  1. Place the plums in a preserving kettle and simmer gently until the syrup is thick.

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. Sugar + plumtop 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

Brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as the syrup thickens, gives the preserves their body and preserving strength.
Purple plums
Supply the fruit flavor and natural pectin that help the preserves thicken and set.

The step that matters

Simmering until the syrup is thick. Cooking off water concentrates the sugar so the syrup thickens and the fruit keeps its shape. Simmering too hard or too long can scorch the sugar or break down the plums.

“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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