Skip to main content
Dessert

To Preserve Plums Without the Skins

A method for preserving plums by removing skins and steeping them in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Plums Without the Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Pour boiling water over the plums and cover until cool.

  2. Remove the skins from the plums.

  3. Make a syrup with 1 pound of sugar and 1 cup of water.

  4. Bring the syrup to a boil.

  5. Pour the boiling syrup over the plums.

  6. Let the plums sit for 1–2 days.

Syrup and jar

  1. Drain the syrup from the plums.

  2. Boil the drained syrup again.

  3. Skim the syrup clear.

  4. Pour the hot syrup over the plums.

  5. Let the plums sit until the next day.

  6. Heat the plums gently in the syrup until clear.

  7. Use a skimmer to transfer the plums to jars.

  8. Boil the syrup until rich and thick.

  9. Remove any scum from the syrup.

  10. Let the syrup cool and settle.

  11. Pour the settled syrup over the plums.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit, which softens and turns clear as it is heated in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into a thick syrup, preserves it.
Water
Dissolves the sugar to make the syrup that surrounds and preserves the plums.

The step that matters

Skim the syrup clear. Scum rising on boiling syrup can cloud the preserve and spoil its appearance, so it must be removed before the syrup is poured back over the fruit.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes