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 ↓
Egg Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the plums
Pierce the skins of the plums with a large needle.
Make the syrup and cook
Boil the sugar with enough water to make a syrup.
Add the plums to the hot syrup and boil until the plums look clear.
Remove the plums and let them cool.
Repeat the process until all plums are done.
Store
Store the plums for three to four days.
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 that is softened and preserved in the sugar syrup.
- Sugar
- Forms the syrup that sweetens the plums and helps preserve them.
The step that matters
Boiling the plums until they look clear. Plums must be cooked gently in the syrup until the sugar penetrates the flesh; stopping too early leaves them underdeveloped and less preserved, while over-boiling can split the skins and turn them mushy.
“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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