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 ↓
Canned Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the plums and prick each with a fork, then place them whole into a syrup made with 1 pint of water and 1 pound of sugar.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
Can the plums and seal them immediately.
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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Plum + sugartop 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
- The main fruit, supplying the flavor and soft flesh of the finished dish.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the fruit's flavor and texture in the jar.
The step that matters
Prick the plums before placing them in the syrup. Pricking the skins lets the fruit release pressure and take up syrup evenly as it heats, so the skins are less likely to split and burst during cooking.
“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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