Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓
Preserved Egg Pluhs
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and drain the plums.
In a preserving kettle, combine the sugar with enough water to dissolve it and heat on low.
Prick each plum with a needle and place them in jars.
Cook and seal
Pour the syrup over the plums and cook until the skins break and the plums are heated through.
As the plums settle, add more syrup if needed.
Seal the jars while hot.
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.
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Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Provide the fruit that softens and forms the preserved body of the dish.
- Sugar
- Dissolves into the syrup to sweeten the fruit and help preserve it.
The step that matters
Seal the jars while hot. Sealing while the fruit and syrup are hot drives air out of the jars and helps create a vacuum seal, which keeps the preserve stable during 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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