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Dessert

Preserved Greengages and Plums

A preserved fruit made by boiling greengages or plums with sugar and water, then jarred with syrup.

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 ↓

Preserved Greengages and Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the fruit carefully and discard any imperfect ones.

  2. Weigh the fruit accurately.

  3. Weigh the sugar accurately.

  4. Prick each plum or gage with a needle in several places.

Cook the fruit in syrup

  1. Boil the sugar with ½ cup of water for every 3 pounds of sugar.

  2. Add the plums to the boiling sugar syrup.

  3. Boil for about 10 minutes, removing them sooner if they start to break.

  4. Use a perforated skimmer to carefully take the plums out.

  5. Drain them well on a large platter.

  6. Boil the syrup until thick and clear, and skim it thoroughly.

  7. Return the plums to the boiling syrup.

  8. Boil for 5 more minutes.

  9. Remove the plums again.

Jar and seal

  1. Fill glass jars with them.

  2. Pour the boiling syrup over the fruit.

  3. Seal 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. 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

Greengages or plums
Provides the main fruit flesh, flavor and tender texture of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into syrup, thickens the liquid and helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Boiling the plums gently and removing them promptly. As fruit heats, its cell walls and pectin soften, so over-boiling makes plums split and fall apart. Pricking the skins lets syrup penetrate evenly, and removing the fruit as soon as it starts to break keeps it whole.

“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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