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Dessert

Plum Preserves

A sweet preserve made from damson plums, sugar, and water, boiled and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Plum Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the preserves

  1. Combine the plums, sugar, and water in a porcelain-lined kettle.

  2. Boil the mixture for 4 hours.

Store

  1. Transfer the preserves to a stone jar.

  2. Allow to cool, then cover tightly.

  3. Store in a cool, dry place until ready to use.

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

Damson plums
Provide the fruit and natural pectin that help the preserves thicken as they cook.
White sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it and thicken the syrup as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Boiling for 4 hours. Long, steady boiling evaporates water and concentrates the sugar so the fruit sets into thick preserves. Too little boiling leaves the preserves runny and more prone to spoiling in storage.

“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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