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Dessert

Plums

Plums preserved in a sugar syrup, simmered and cooled, then reheated until syrup coats fruit.

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 ↓

Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Prick the plums with a needle to prevent bursting.

  2. Simmer the plums gently in a thin syrup made from 3 pounds of sugar and just enough water to moisten the sugar.

  3. Transfer the plums to a bowl.

  4. Let them cool for three days.

Make the syrup and pack

  1. Make a fresh syrup with 3 pounds of sugar.

  2. Boil the plums in the fresh syrup until clear and syrup adheres.

  3. Place the plums one by one into small pots.

  4. Pour the syrup over the plums.

  5. Reserve a little syrup.

  6. Boil the reserved syrup longer.

Finish and dry

  1. Give the fruit a warm bath.

  2. Drain the fruit.

  3. Place the fruit on plates to dry in a cool oven.

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

Plums
The main fruit, which softens and turns clear as it absorbs the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, boiled into syrup, preserves it and gives it body.

The step that matters

Boiling the plums in the fresh syrup. Boil until the fruit looks clear and the syrup clings to it. Undercooked fruit stays cloudy and watery, while overcooking can split or toughen the skins.

“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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