Name: Peeseeved Plums
Ingredients: 1 pound plums; ¾ pound sugar

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 ↓

Peeseeved Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately warm oven

Ingredients

1 pound plums
¾ pound sugar

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 fruit

Layer the plums and sugar alternately in a stone jar.
Place the jar in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the oven cools.
If prepared at tea time, leave the jar until morning.

Make the syrup

Strain the juice from the plums.
Boil and clarify the strained juice.

Jar and cover

Carefully transfer the fruit to glass or china jars.
Pour the hot syrup over the fruit.
Cover tightly with egg, tissue paper, or thick white paper.

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.

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 flesh and juice that become the syrup and give the preserve its flavor.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and draws out moisture, helping preserve the plums and thicken the syrup.

“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.