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Plum Soup

A sweet soup made from blue plums, water, cinnamon, sugar, thickened with cornstarch or sago, finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Plum Soup

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the plums and boil them with water, cinnamon, and sugar until well done.

  2. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch or soaked sago and cook for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Run the mixture through a colander and add butter.

  4. Cool and serve with zwieback and beaten egg whites if desired.

  5. Hot cream may be added instead of butter.

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 + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Blue plums
Provide the main fruit flavor, tartness, and body for the soup.
Cornstarch or sago
Thickens the liquid into a soup-like consistency as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the strained soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with cornstarch or soaked sago and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. Starch must be fully cooked to swell and gelatinize; undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste and weak thickening, while the simmering time lets the mixture set evenly.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar, butter, egg, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, butter, egg, cream. 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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