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 a syrup by combining sugar and water in a pot.
Wash the plums and add them whole to the syrup.
Prick the plums with a fork before placing them in the syrup to prevent bursting.
Boil the plums in the syrup for 8 minutes.
Transfer the plums into cans and seal immediately.
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
- Plums
- Provide the fruit, which is cooked whole so it keeps its shape and flavour in the syrup.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that surrounds it.
The step that matters
Prick the plums before they go into the syrup. Whole plums have skins that trap steam and expanding juice as they heat. Pricking lets that pressure escape, so the fruit stays intact rather than splitting in the hot syrup.
“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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