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Dessert

Canned Plums

Preserved plums boiled in a sugar water 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 ↓

Canned Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a pot to make syrup.

  2. Wash plums and add them whole to the syrup.

Cook and can

  1. Boil plums in syrup for 8 minutes.

  2. Transfer plums into cans and seal immediately.

  3. Prick plums with a fork before placing them in syrup to prevent bursting.

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
Provide the fruit, flavor, and texture that the syrup surrounds and preserves.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Sealing the cans immediately. Plums are hot when transferred, and sealing them right away keeps air out while they cool. Delay lets the contents cool and can weaken the seal, risking spoilage.

“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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