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Plum Sauce, Simple, for Sweet Puddings

A simple plum sauce made by boiling plums with sugar and water, then sieving and serving over sweet puddings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Plum Sauce, Simple, for Sweet Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and stone the plums.

  2. Place the plums in a saucepan with sugar and water.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture until it becomes a pulp, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.

  2. Press the mixture through a coarse sieve.

  3. Serve in a tureen or pour over pudding.

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

Ripe red plums
Provide the fruit pulp, flavour and natural pectin that thickens the sauce as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the plums while helping the sauce thicken.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture boils. Sugar and fruit sugars can scorch on the bottom of the pan before the pulp forms. Stirring occasionally spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce from tasting burnt.

“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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