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Plums, Magnum Bonum, Preserved

Preserved plums are plums simmered in a sugar syrup, then stored in jars.

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 ↓

Plums, Magnum Bonum, Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Blanch the plums in boiling water for 1 minute to make peeling easier.

  2. If the plums are not fully ripe, simmer them gently for 3 minutes.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Dissolve the sugar in a little water, skim, and boil until it reaches almost candy height.

  2. Add the plums to the syrup and boil gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Carefully lift the plums out and strain the syrup over them.

Rest and finish

  1. Let the plums sit in the syrup for 2 days.

  2. Boil the plums again until they look clear, about 10 minutes.

  3. Transfer the plums to jars, cover with syrup, seal the jars, and store in a cool, dry place.

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

Plums
Provide the fruit, which softens and turns translucent as it cooks in the syrup.
Sugar
Makes the syrup that sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it by drawing out water.

The step that matters

Boiling the plums in the syrup. Sugar concentration must be high enough to preserve the fruit, so the syrup should reach near candy height before the plums go in. Boiling gently keeps the fruit whole while the syrup thickens and penetrates the flesh.

“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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