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Dessert

Plum Butter

A fruit preserve made from plums, sweet apples, and white sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the fruit

  1. Cook the plums in a kettle with enough water to prevent burning until soft.

  2. In a separate kettle, cook the sweet apples with enough water to prevent burning until soft.

  3. Pass both fruits through a colander into the same kettle.

Sweeten and finish

  1. Add ¾ pound of white sugar for each pound of fruit.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes and then seal.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 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).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 main fruit flavor and body, with natural pectin that helps the butter thicken.
Sweet apples
Add pectin and mild body, helping the fruit cook down into a smooth, spreadable texture.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and, as water evaporates, concentrates the fruit into a thicker butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the fruit with enough water until soft. Fruit sugars scorch quickly on the bottom of a kettle. Adequate water keeps the fruit from burning while it softens, which also lets it break down for straining.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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