Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓
Dried Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Stem, stone, and clean the plums, removing any specks.
Make the syrup and scald the plums
In a porcelain kettle, combine part of the plums with the sugar and heat slowly to extract the juice.
Scald the plums thoroughly without boiling, then remove the fruit with a coarse wire skimmer and spread it on platters.
Scald the remaining plums in the same syrup, then boil the syrup for 5 to 10 minutes and pour it over the plums.
Dry
Dry the plums quickly as convenient.
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.
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Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 dried, with their natural juice forming the syrup.
- Sugar
- Draws juice out of the fruit and adds sweetness to the syrup that coats the plums.
The step that matters
Scald the plums without boiling. Heating the fruit gently softens the skin and draws out juice without bursting the flesh. A rolling boil would break the plums apart and leave the fruit mushy rather than intact when dried.
“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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