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Dessert

Plum Conserve

A sweet preserve made from plums, oranges, lemons, raisins, and sugar, cooked slowly and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Plum Conserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and stone the plums.

  2. Grind the oranges, lemons, and raisins using a meat grinder and add to the plums.

  3. For each pint of fruit, add 1 pint of sugar.

Cook and store

  1. Cook the mixture slowly for 2 hours, stirring constantly after it begins to boil.

  2. Transfer to glasses or stone crocks and cover with melted paraffin.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Plum + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together309 recipes

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

  3. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Blue plums
Provide the main fruit body, pectin and tartness for the preserve's structure and flavor.
Oranges
Add citrus acidity and aroma that brighten the sweetness of the preserve.
Lemons
Add acidity that balances sugar and helps the preserve set.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and body to the thick preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, with the fruit's acid and pectin, helps it set and keeps it stable.

The step that matters

Stirring after the mixture boils. Once the mixture boils, sugar and fruit can scorch on the bottom of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and prevents burnt flavor during the long slow cook.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, raisin, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, raisin, 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.

More plum preserve recipes

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