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To Preserve Magnum Bonum Plums

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and brandy work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Preserve Magnum Bonum Plums

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place plums in a pot with enough spring water to cover them and heat gently until they can be peeled.

  2. Peel the plums and place them in a jar with a thin syrup that covers them to prevent discoloration.

  3. The next day, boil the syrup, add the plums, and simmer gently.

  4. Allow the plums to cool, then repeat the process of boiling and cooling until nearly cold.

  5. Remove the plums, strain the syrup, add more sugar, and skim it well.

  6. Return the plums to the syrup, boil until clear, and cover with brandy paper.

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 + brandytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together168 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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