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Dessert

Compote of Prunes

A compote made from French plums simmered with water, sugar, and cinnamon, then served with a sugared syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Compote of Prunes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the plums in a basin of water.

  2. Place the plums in a saucepan with water and add 4 oz of sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes.

Make the syrup and serve

  1. Remove the plums and drain them on a sieve.

  2. Strain the cooking liquid, add 2 oz of sugar, and reduce it to syrup.

  3. Once cold, pour the syrup over the plums and serve.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cinnamon + syruptop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together990 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon 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

French plums
Provide the fruit that softens during simmering and forms the body of the compote.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, reduced in the liquid, forms a thick syrup that glazes the plums.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that flavours the cooking liquid and the fruit.

The step that matters

Reducing the syrup. Reducing the strained liquid with sugar concentrates sweetness and body. Pouring it over the plums only once it is cold lets it thicken properly into a syrup rather than staying runny.

Swap the plum

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, syrup. 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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