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 ↓
Preserved Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and stew
Prick the plums and place them in a kettle.
Add sugar and enough water to cover the bottom of the kettle.
Stew the plums slowly for about 1.5 hours.
Rest
Cover the kettle and set it aside.
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 fruit itself; its flesh softens and releases juice as it stews.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juice, forming a syrup that helps preserve it.
The step that matters
Stew the plums slowly. Gentle heat lets the sugar draw juice out and dissolve into a syrup while the plums soften evenly. Stewing too hard can break the fruit apart or scorch the sugar on the bottom of the kettle.
“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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