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Green Gage Plums

Preserved green gage plums in a sugar syrup.

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 ↓

Green Gage Plums

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Stem and wash the plums.

  2. Fill jars with the plums and place them in a boiler of cold water, ensuring the water does not boil over the jars.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes or until the fruit begins to soften.

Make the syrup

  1. Remove the jars and pour the accumulated juice into a porcelain kettle.

  2. Add enough sugar to the juice to create a rich syrup and bring it to a boil.

  3. Fill the jars with the syrup and let them stand in boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Remove each jar one at a time and seal.

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

Green gage plums
Provide the fruit and its juice, which forms the base of the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, dissolved in the juice, thickens it into a rich syrup that preserves the fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the jars until the fruit just softens. Plums cooked too briefly stay firm and may not release enough juice, while overcooking breaks them down. Keeping the water from boiling over the jars keeps the heating gentle and even.

“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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