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To Preserve Green Gages

A method for preserving green gage plums in sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cabbage work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Preserve Green Gages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plums

  1. Gather the plums with stalks and measure an equal amount of loaf sugar.

  2. Place vine or cabbage leaves in a pan, layer the plums, and cover with more leaves.

  3. Fill the pan with cold water.

  4. When the plums float, remove them and carefully peel the skin.

Green and drain

  1. Drain the water and heat the plums again with fresh leaves, covering the pan tightly.

  2. Cook slowly for several hours until the plums turn green.

  3. Remove and drain the plums on a sieve.

Make the syrup and preserve

  1. Clarify the sugar and boil it for eight minutes.

  2. Add the plums and boil gently until they are transparent.

  3. Transfer the plums to jars and boil the syrup for a few minutes before pouring it over the plums when cold.

  4. After three or four days, pour off the syrup, boil it again, and pour it over the fruit when cold.

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 + cabbagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cabbagetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Largest green gage plums
The fruit that is greened, then made translucent and sweet in the syrup.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as a thick syrup, preserves it and makes it transparent.

The step that matters

Cooking the plums slowly until they turn green. Heating gently in leaves over several hours lets the fruit change colour without breaking apart. Rapid boiling would soften and split the plums before the syrup can penetrate.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, 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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