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Dessert

Almack Preserve

A preserve made from split plums, apples, pears, and sugar, boiled and sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 245 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Almack Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. In a pan, combine the plums, apples, and pears.

  2. Boil the fruit without adding water until well blended.

  3. Remove the stones from the fruit.

Cook and set

  1. Stir in the sugar and boil for one hour.

  2. Pour the mixture into wide shallow pots and let it cool.

  3. Cut into slices for 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 + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together245 recipes

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

  2. Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

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

  4. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

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

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

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

Plums
Provide the main fruit body and natural pectin that helps the preserve thicken as it cooks.
Apples
Add pectin and body, helping the mixture set into a firm, sliceable texture.
Pears
Contribute soft fruit pulp and flavour that blends into the thick preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, through prolonged boiling, thickens it and helps it keep.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar in with the fruit for one hour. Sugar must be cooked long enough with the fruit to concentrate and thicken the mixture. Too little boiling leaves it runny, and it may not set or keep well once cooled.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, pear, 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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