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Dessert

Plums, French, Stewed

A dessert of French plums stewed in water, port wine, and lemon, sweetened with optional sugar and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,083 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plums, French, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the plums

  1. Stew the plums gently in water for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the water and use it to make syrup until clear.

Make the syrup

  1. Add the plums back to the syrup with port wine, lemon juice, and rind.

  2. Simmer very gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the plums on a glass dish, remove the lemon rind, and pour the syrup over them.

  2. Let cool before serving.

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. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Plum + port winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Plum + allspicetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together162 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  4. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Port wine + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

French plums
Provide the main fruit, which softens during gentle stewing and becomes tender.
Port wine
Adds depth and aroma to the syrup as it simmers with the fruit.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the syrup, and its rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently for 30 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the plums whole and tender while the syrup reduces slowly. A hard boil can break the fruit apart and turn the syrup cloudy.

Swap the allspice

The recipe marks allspice as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, port wine, lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Gingerfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, port wine, lemon, 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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