Why it works: Sugar and plum 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 ↓
Compote of the Magnum Bonum, or Other Large Plums
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the sugar with the water for about 10 minutes.
Cook the plums
Remove the stalks from the plums.
Simmer the plums very softly for 20 minutes.
Adjust the sugar and cooking time as needed for different varieties of fruit.
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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Sugar + plumtop 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
- Sugar
- Sweetens the compote and helps the syrup thicken as it boils.
- Plums
- Provide the fruit, which softens and releases juice and flavour as it simmers.
The step that matters
Simmer the plums very softly. Gentle heat softens the fruit while keeping its skins and shape intact. A hard boil would break the plums down into a mush and can make the syrup cloudy.
“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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