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Dessert

To Preserve Fruits for Tarts or Other Family Desserts

A method of preserving cherries, plums, and apples in sugar for later use in desserts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

To Preserve Fruits for Tarts or Other Family Desserts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the jars

  1. Gather ripe cherries, plums, and apples.

  2. Place them in small jars that hold 1 pound each.

  3. Sprinkle 6 ounces of pounded sugar over each jar.

Cook

  1. Cover each jar with two tied bladders.

  2. Submerge the jars in a large pot of water up to the neck.

  3. Boil gently for 3 hours.

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 + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and a soft, jam-like texture once cooked.
Plums
Add fruit body, tartness, and flavor to the preserve.
Apples
Add pectin and body, helping the preserve set and hold its texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and draws moisture from the fruit, helping it keep its texture and preserve well.

The step that matters

Boil gently for 3 hours. A rapid, rolling boil can crack glass jars through sudden temperature change and can break the fruit down unevenly. A gentle simmer heats the jars and fruit slowly and evenly, keeping the preserve intact.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar. 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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