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Dessert

Plums, French, Stewed for Dessert

A dessert of stewed French plums simmered in a syrup of sugar, lemon, and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and port wine work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 32 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plums, French, Stewed for Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Soak the plums in water for a few hours.

  2. Put the soaked plums and soaking water into a saucepan and simmer gently for 1 hour.

Make the syrup

  1. Remove the plums and strain the liquid.

  2. Boil the strained liquid with the sugar until it becomes clear to make a syrup.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the plums, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the syrup.

  2. Stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  3. Once cooled, place the plums in a glass dish and pour the syrup over them before serving.

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 + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + port winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French plums
Form the main fruit, softening during long gentle cooking while holding their shape.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the liquid and dissolves to form a thick, clear syrup that coats the fruit.
Lemon
Lemon juice adds acidity to balance the sweet syrup, and the rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1.5 hours. Vigorous boiling breaks down the soft plums and clouds the syrup. A gentle simmer lets the fruit soften and keep its shape while the flavour develops.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, sugar, port wine):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, port wine. 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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