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Dessert

Preserved Plums

A method of preserving plums by boiling them with sugar, then sealing them in jars with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Preserved Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Cut the plums in halves and remove the stones.

  2. Weigh the plums and measure out an equal weight of loaf sugar.

  3. Crack the stones, remove the kernels, and break them into pieces.

Cook and rest

  1. Boil the plums and kernels slowly for about 15 minutes in minimal water.

  2. Spread the mixture on a large dish to cool and strain the liquid.

  3. The next day, add the syrup and boil for another 15 minutes.

Jar and seal

  1. Transfer to jars, pour the warm juice over the plums, and seal with bladder and paper dipped in brandy when cool.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit that softens and releases juice to form the preserve.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens and preserves the fruit by drawing out moisture to form a syrup.
Brandy
Used to dampen the seal, helping keep the top of the jar protected.

The step that matters

Boiling the plums and kernels slowly in minimal water. Slow boiling in little water softens the fruit and extracts flavour without scorching. Too much heat or water can break the fruit down or dilute the syrup before the sugar is added.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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