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 ↓
Stewed Plums and Prunes
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the dried plums thoroughly.
Stew the plums in water to cover for 1 hour.
Add ½ cup sugar, adjusting to taste for sweetness.
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
- Dried plums
- Softens during stewing and releases its natural sugars and juices, forming the fruit and its syrup.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the fruit's tartness in the finished stewed fruit.
The step that matters
Add the sugar last, to taste. Dried plums vary in sweetness and tartness, and the syrup's flavour concentrates as the liquid reduces. Adding sugar after stewing lets you judge the sweetness before adding more.
“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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