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Dessert

Preserved Egg Plums

Preserves plums in a sugar syrup.

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

Preserved Egg Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the plums and wipe them dry.

  2. In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar with enough water to melt it and heat on low until it simmers.

  3. Prick each plum thoroughly with a needle or a fork with fine prongs.

Cook the plums

  1. Place a layer of plums in the syrup and cook until they lose some color and the skins begin to break.

  2. Remove the plums with a perforated skimmer and place them in a large dish to cool.

  3. Repeat with additional layers of plums, cooking and cooling them in the same manner.

  4. Carefully replace any broken skins to maintain the appearance of the plums.

  5. Once all layers are cooked, return the first layer to the kettle and boil until transparent.

Jar and seal

  1. Place the cooked plums in glass jars while the last layer cools.

  2. Pour the hot syrup over the plums and let them cool before sealing the jars.

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. Sugar + plumtop 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
Main fruit; pricking and cooking in syrup softens the skins and lets the sugar penetrate.
Sugar
Makes the syrup that preserves the plums and gives them sweetness.

The step that matters

Pricking each plum thoroughly. Piercing the skin lets the hot syrup penetrate the flesh evenly; unpierced plums stay firm outside and under-sweetened inside, and may split unevenly while cooking.

“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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