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Dessert

Persimmon Preserves

A sweet preserve made by stewing persimmons and cooking them in a sugar syrup with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Persimmon and lemon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Persimmon Preserves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the persimmons

  1. Soak the persimmons in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Place the persimmons in a pot and cover with water.

  3. Stew gently until tender.

  4. Remove the persimmons with a slotted spoon and let them cool and firm up.

Make the syrup

  1. Make a syrup by boiling 1 cup of cold water with each pound of sugar until clear, skimming constantly.

  2. Add the persimmons to the clear syrup and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the persimmons again.

  4. Spread them on dishes to dry in the sun.

  5. Add the lemon juice and peel to the syrup.

  6. Boil until thick.

Finish and seal

  1. Return the persimmons to the syrup.

  2. Cook for an additional 20 minutes.

  3. Pour the mixture into glass jars and seal when cool.

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. Persimmon + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Persimmon + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Firm, ripe persimmons
Provide the fruit that becomes tender and holds its shape in the preserve.
Sugar
Sweetens the preserve and thickens the syrup as it cooks down, helping it keep.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet persimmon flavor.

The step that matters

Skimming the syrup until clear. Skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the syrup and spoil the preserve's clear, clean appearance and flavor.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pearfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against persimmon, 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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