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To Preserve Magnum Bonum Plums

Preserve of Magnum Bonum plums made by boiling in syrup and covering with brandy paper.

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

Prepare the plums

  1. Place plums in spring water over low heat until they can be peeled.

  2. Peel the plums.

  3. Place the peeled plums in a jar with a thin syrup to cover them.

Make the preserve

  1. The next day, boil the syrup.

  2. Add the plums to the boiling syrup.

  3. Gently boil the plums.

  4. Let the plums cool.

  5. Repeat the process, turning the plums in the syrup until nearly cold.

  6. Remove the plums.

  7. Strain the syrup.

  8. Add more sugar to the syrup.

  9. Skim the syrup well.

  10. Return the plums to the syrup.

  11. Boil until clear.

  12. 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

What each ingredient does

Magnum bonum plums
Provide the fruit that is cooked and preserved in the syrup.
Sugar
Thickens the syrup and preserves the fruit by drawing out moisture and inhibiting spoilage.
Spring water
Dissolves the sugar to form the syrup that cooks and covers the plums.

The step that matters

Boil until clear. Boiling too briefly leaves the syrup thin and the fruit under-cooked, while overboiling can make it too thick and dark. Watching for clarity signals that the sugar has dissolved and the syrup is concentrated enough to preserve the plums.

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.

“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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