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Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

A stew of dried plums cooked with water, wine, and sugar until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and red wine work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Stewed Pruneaux De Tours, or Tours Dried Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a pot, combine the dried plums, water, and light red wine (or port wine).

  2. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1 hour, or until the plums are tender.

  3. Add the sugar when the plums are half-done and continue cooking until soft.

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 + red winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Red wine + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together864 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried plums
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, sweet fruit as they stew.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the tart flavor of the plums.
Light red wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Adding the sugar at halfway. Sugar added too early can slow the softening of the fruit, so the plums may stay firm. Adding it once they are half-done lets them soften fully while the sugar still dissolves into the cooking liquid and sweetens it evenly.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Pearfits about as well
  2. Plumthe original
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against red wine, 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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