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Dessert

Ego Plums

Plums boiled in a sugar syrup and jarred.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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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 ↓

Ego Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Boil water and let the plums stand in it for five minutes.

  2. Place a colander in a deep pan and pour boiling water over the plums until the skin cracks.

  3. Remove the colander and peel the plums carefully.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Make a syrup using equal parts sugar and water.

  2. Boil the plums in the syrup until done.

Cool and jar

  1. Lay the plums on a flat dish to cool.

  2. Transfer the plums to jars and pour the hot syrup over them.

  3. Seal the jars tightly.

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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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
The fruit that forms the body and main flavour of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, dissolved in the syrup, helps preserve the fruit.

The step that matters

Dipping the plums in boiling water until the skin cracks. The brief hot water loosens the skin so it peels cleanly. If the plums stay in too long they can soften and lose shape, while too little time leaves the skin stuck to the flesh.

“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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