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Dessert

Plum Shape

A gelatin dessert made from plums, sugar, and water, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Plum Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Pour boiling water over the plums.

  2. Let the plums sit until the skins soften but do not break.

  3. Pour off the water.

  4. Cool the plums.

  5. Peel the plums.

  6. Remove the stones, saving all the juice.

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Stew the plums with 1 cup of water until tender.

  3. Sweeten the stew to taste.

  4. Stir the hot plum mixture into the soaked gelatine.

  5. Add lemon juice or wine if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Plum + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit flavour, colour and juice that give the gelatin its body and taste.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly structure as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the plums.

The step that matters

Stir the hot plum mixture into the soaked gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in hot liquid to set evenly. Lumps or undissolved granules leave weak, grainy spots in the finished gel.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, cream. 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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