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Plums, Preserved Dry

A method of preserving plums by simmering them in a sugar syrup and drying.

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, Preserved Dry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Divide the plums and remove the stones.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup with equal weight of sugar and plums, using enough water to dissolve the sugar.

  2. Put the plums in the syrup and simmer gently until tender but not falling apart.

  3. Remove from heat and let the plums sit in the syrup overnight.

Concentrate and soak

  1. Strain the syrup, boil it with more sugar until it reaches a candy stage.

  2. Pour the syrup over the plums and let them simmer gently for a few minutes until soft.

  3. Let the plums sit in the syrup for three days, then drain and spread them on dishes to dry.

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 that is softened, sweetened and dried into the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as syrup, draws water out of the plums for preserving.

The step that matters

Boiling the syrup to candy stage. Sugar concentration must become high enough to stop spoilage and keep the plums from fermenting. Undercooked syrup leaves the fruit too wet and prone to spoiling, while overcooking can make the sugar hard and sticky.

“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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