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Dessert

French and German Plums

This dish preserves plums by boiling them 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: 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 ↓

French and German Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the syrup

  1. Prick the plums with a needle to prevent bursting.

  2. In a pot, combine 1 pint of water and 2 pounds of sugar to make a syrup.

  3. Heat the syrup until the sugar is dissolved, then add the plums.

  4. Slowly bring to a boil and let them boil for 5 minutes.

Pack and seal

  1. Using a perforated skimmer, lift the plums out onto platters.

  2. Pack the boiled plums into jars, filling them three-fourths full.

  3. Pour the scalding syrup over the plums until it runs down the sides.

  4. Seal the jars immediately.

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
Hold their shape and flavor as the main fruit, softening gently in the hot syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that preserves it.

The step that matters

Pricking the plums before cooking. A needle prick lets the skin release pressure as the fruit heats, so the plums are less likely to split or burst in the boiling syrup.

“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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