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 ↓
Plum-jelly
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the plums until soft to extract the juice.
Combine the plum juice with an equal amount of white sugar.
Cook the mixture until it reaches the desired jelly consistency, following the method for apple jelly.
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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Plum + sugartop 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
- Plum juice
- Provides the fruit flavour and the liquid base that the jelly sets from.
- White sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the juice thicken into a set jelly when cooked.
The step that matters
Cooking to the desired consistency. Jelly sets as sugar and fruit pectin concentrate through boiling and cooling. Cooking too briefly leaves it runny, while cooking too long can make it stiff or cloudy. Checking the set before removing it from heat helps avoid both problems.
“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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