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Purple Plums Preserved

Preserved plums made by layering plums and sugar and boiling in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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 ↓

Purple Plums Preserved

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Layer the plums and sugar in a clean stone jar.

Cook

  1. Cover the jar and place it in a kettle of water over heat.

  2. Boil the water all day, adding more water as it evaporates.

  3. If fermentation occurs, repeat the boiling process.

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
Supply the fruit, which softens and concentrates in flavor during long, gentle heating.
Sugar
Draws water out of the fruit and helps preserve it against spoilage.

The step that matters

Keeping the kettle topped up. The boil must stay steady for the whole day. If the outer water runs low, the jar stops being heated evenly and the process is interrupted, so the water should be replenished as it evaporates.

“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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