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Wild Plum Marmalade

A preserve made by cooking plums with sugar until it sets like jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Wild Plum Marmalade

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the plums through a sieve to extract the puree.

  2. Add 1 pound of sugar for each pint of plum puree.

  3. Cook the mixture thoroughly, stirring almost constantly.

  4. Test the mixture in a dish; when it hardens like jelly, it is done.

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 puree that forms the base and supplies pectin and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it cooks down, helps it set into a firm, spreadable jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking until it sets. Cook thoroughly and stir almost constantly so the mixture does not scorch on the bottom. Sugar and pectin only gel once enough water has evaporated, so the dish test is the reliable check for doneness.

“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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