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To Preserve Plums or Damsons Whole

A method for preserving whole plums or damsons in syrup and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Preserve Plums or Damsons Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Weigh the fruit and use ¾ pound of crushed sugar for every pound of fruit.

  2. In stone jars, layer the fruit and sugar alternately.

  3. Cover the jars with cloth.

  4. Let the jars sit in an oven after baking bread until the oven cools.

Make the syrup

  1. Strain the syrup.

  2. Boil and clarify the syrup.

  3. Pour the syrup over the fruit in glass jars or china pots.

  4. Cover the jars with egg tissue paper.

  5. Seal the jars with thick white paper or bladder.

Peel and boil

  1. Place the plums in water over low heat until they begin to peel.

  2. Remove the skins.

  3. Put the skinned plums in a jar.

  4. Cover the plums with thin syrup.

  5. Boil the syrup the next day.

  6. Add the plums to the boiling syrup.

  7. Boil gently until cold.

  8. Repeat the process.

Finish

  1. Turn the plums in the syrup until nearly cold.

  2. Remove the plums.

  3. Strain the syrup.

  4. Add more sugar to the syrup.

  5. Skim the syrup.

  6. Return the plums to the syrup.

  7. Boil until clear.

  8. Transfer the plums to jars.

  9. Seal the jars with paper.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
The fruit supplies the flesh, flavour and body of the preserve.
Sugar
Sugar draws water out of the fruit and thickens the syrup, preserving it and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil gently and repeat. Sugar must slowly replace the water in the fruit. Boiling hard or too fast can burst the plums and cloud the syrup, so gentle heat with cooling between boils keeps the fruit whole.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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