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 ↓
Magnum Bonum Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Gather the plums with stalks.
Scald the plums in boiling water to remove the skins.
If the plums are not quite ripe, simmer them for a few minutes.
Use 1 cup of fine loaf sugar per pound of fruit and clarify it.
Make the jam
When the sugar syrup is nearly boiling, add the plums.
Boil for 15 minutes.
Transfer the plums to a basin.
Let them stand for 1-2 days.
Boil the plums again for 10 minutes or until they are perfectly transparent.
Pot and serve
Put the plums into jars.
Strain the syrup through a sieve.
Pour the strained syrup evenly over the plums.
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
- Provide the fruit body, flavour and natural pectin that help the jam set.
- Fine loaf sugar
- Sweetens the jam and thickens the syrup as water evaporates, aiding set and preservation.
The step that matters
Boiling the plums again until perfectly transparent. Sugar slowly replaces the water in the fruit, which is why the plums turn clear. Boiling too little leaves the fruit cloudy and the syrup too thin to set. Boiling too long can break the fruit down and make the jam overly firm.
“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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