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Dessert

Preserved Plums

Preserved plums are plums cooked with sugar and water, optionally with molasses or egg white, then jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Preserved Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cut the plums in half and remove the stones.

  2. Weigh the plums and use 1 pound of sugar for every pound of fruit.

  3. Crack the stones, remove the kernels, and break them into pieces.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the plums and kernels slowly in as little water as possible for about 15 minutes.

  2. Spread the plums on a large dish to cool and strain the liquid.

  3. The next day, melt the sugar in ½ cup of water and boil until clear, skimming as needed.

  4. Add the plums and the strained liquid to the syrup and boil for 15 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer the plums to jars, pour the warm juice over them, and seal with brandy paper when cool.

Make the molasses version

  1. For a molasses version, slit each plum and place them in a gallon earthen vessel with 1 pint of molasses.

  2. Cover and set on hot coals for 12 hours, stirring occasionally and renewing the coals.

  3. The next day, transfer to 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Syrup + molassestop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. 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
The fruit being preserved; it softens in the syrup while keeping its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, at high concentration, helps preserve it by binding water.
Molasses
Adds dark color and a rich, treacle-like flavor to the molasses version.
Egg white
Helps clarify the syrup, as impurities bind to it and can be skimmed away.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clear. Foam and impurities rise as the sugar melts and boils. Skimming them off keeps the syrup clear and stops cloudiness and off flavors from carrying into the preserved fruit.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup, molasses, egg. 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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